by JS Gilbert
This flamboyantly unflightless bird—
pinions listless, wings aflutter, feathers
hanging limp like a mink stole, sneering
in the faces of penguins, turkeys, and a
bewingéd God—stands indolent in its perambulance,
upright as you please and bounding
through the grass like the famously grounded
gazelle, just hops atop this fallen branch
as if it weren’t a joyful sin, as if
his wife weren’t soaring to the nest, as if
the rest of us hadn’t forgotten how to fly.
God is love and light
particle and wave
the infinite entanglement
that binds creation with laws
we cannot touch but
are touched by.
We move as we are moved
love collapsed into hands that
once observed serve
either others or ourselves.
‘I don’t know,’ I say to those who ask.
And I don’t. Know.
Why the spires, rifts, domes.
Why the channels, depressions, slopes.
Why spheres.
‘Maybe you should’, says my son, ‘build an actual…castle?’
But I know
what those are, and what they’re for.
So they stop to explore these abstralien sandscapes,
wondering
at the meaning of my creation, and my purpose.
No plan guides my tremorous fingers that
mold and shape and smooth the forms
that form without me.
Arches fall and towers crumble, collapse under
misplaced knees and thoughtless feet.
These places weren’t meant to be, let alone
last even through a day or night or hour.
They are self-serving, imposing haphazard order
on an idle chaos minding its own business.
God took six days, so they say, plus time to rest,
yet I spare only the morning
because I have other plans.
They, too, are as hasty in their admiration which
so fickley turns to mischievous destruction by
toddlered toes, unleashed paws, and cruelty.
Even seagulls are dismissive of my walls, perching with
prejudice until the structures crack to expose
my lack, and my depravity.
Six days seems equally rash, short-sighted and shrifted
given the scope of eternity, of all the hairs on all our heads.
So we blear and smear and have trod among
God’s almighty spires in ignorance and arrogance,
wondering
at His meaning, and His purpose.
Yet He had no other plans and
His fingers do not tremble, and
His walls were built counting on our cruelty to
crack them
and expose yet more layers of perfection.
The soul dawdles, lingers in the past;
trailing fingers along the surface
of what should have been delved
long before.
Ripples expand to reflect the outline
of regret, the shapes we missed, then,
yet now perceive with sorrowful joy
until the soul startles and wakes,
cries for our attention:
Wait!
