Description
Describe how heaven was when you first saw it
or heard of it. Now describe how heaven makes the earth come green
in the spring when the soil is always soft from melting frost
and much too much rain, so that the earth is as moist as humidity
and has everything in common with a damp, midsummer evening.
Describe what is pagan and gets you kicked out
and what you can get away with and still get in;
why perennials can be planted once in the soft spring soil
and return new each year
as though proof that they are reverent,
and though colorful, not pagan.
Then describe how you would ask all this of,
which means to pray to,
God who, for fear our frail bodies
and souls would give way,
never says his own name to us,
pronounced with light
and oceans of salt
and earth's own soul
and birth and death all at once.
Why make such slippery and breakable things
that cannot even hear a name
and remain whole
or come new again in spring
like the maple trees
I fathered and watered in my grandfather's
front yard?
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