QUAERERE

Fearing I was missing, God

Took out an ad for my return

Or reliable word of my whereabouts 

In the Wolfenbuttel Aviso

For December 15, 1632. 

The Thirty Years War was then

An adolescent so God

Wasn't surprised that no one

Had time to tell him

Where I might be found.

Not giving up, He then

Engaged Eugene Francois Vidocq

Who searched Paris from April 1830 

Through July 1831. Vidocq concluded 

I was hiding among the unborn.

Since 1927 Schrodinger's cat

Has, from his box, acted as God's agent

Buying and selling, saving and damning.

He may some day tell God where I am.

Then again, he may not.

LIGHT

Starlight for my father at fifteen

Still awake at five in the morning

High in his attic, standing by the window.

A flickering dream for my mother,

Fourteen and just about to wake up

A mile or two away. It's a Saturday;

He will go to the synagogue and ask God

Some probing questions. She will go

To a movie and gather evidence

Of how reality can be constructed

From shadows and light and fear and love.

WALKING

Max and God walked home from work some nights

Talking about their jobs -- they were in the garment trade –

And my grandmother Esther, a mystery to them both.

The walk was long --12 miles or more from 39^th Street

To Snediker Avenue. Two dogs walked with them

Until they crossed Grant Street. A block or so later

A grey and white cat would appear and pretend

He just happened to be going the same way.

Max had gradually stopped being a believer

But never said so, lest he hurt God's feelings.

ANOTHER

I'd hired a space for the poem. Its personnel –

The poet William Cowper, Bill Monroe, a raven –

Would arrive later. I thought Monroe, who was ornery,

Might get along with Cowper, who was mad

And also -- for no particular reason -- eternally damned.

I still think that poem might have been good

(There'd have been some slow bluegrass music 

And the raven had agreed to dance a few steps).

Then Cowper got lost on the way, ending somehow

Hunched miserably in a corner of Valhalla, and Monroe

Refused to do a poem co-starring a raven.

The raven took a rain-check and, in the end,

We used God, my grandfather, two dogs and a cat.

TWO

My father wrote that while
Most men look up for salvation
I tend to look down. This is so
And one of the things God and I
Have in common. Think about it;
What direction else can He look?
Some days it seems salvation
Is slow in coming or wastes time
Amusing small things by the way
But God and I can be patient.

PERHAPS

What if God suffers not from the remembrance
Of nails and thirst but a lack of confidence
So that all the praise, all the epithets
Calling Him all-powerful, all-knowing,
All-seeing, all-encompassing, all-good,
All wool and a yard wide, ring hollow
Being desperate attempts to shore up an ego
The collapse of which will drown us all?
We will praise You; we will ask Bach
And Brahms and B. B. King to write You lullabies
Rest a while; do not kill us today.

IN LIEU

Since my father is dead and his father as well
To whom can God look if He needs a job
Or a friend He can trust? I don't own a shop
That makes women's coats and the angels --
For reasons I'm sure they think sufficient --
Never once took me flying. Still, I suppose
I can lend Him a few dollars and listen
If He really needs to talk about His problems.

USSHER

When God fell out of love with James Ussher
The sky turned dark for 16 seconds
And the wren, forgetting its inborn song,
Trilled something of its own composition
Making an owl swear lasting devotion;
Moss grow on the east side of a tree;
Consciences were troubled; three dreams
Were canceled and two rerouted.
Then God relented; the relieved Ussher
Went on to become Archbishop of Armagh
And deduce that the world's creation
Took place at about six in the afternoon
Of a pleasant day in early Fall.

VISITOR

Because I am my father's son, God
Sometimes drops by, usually late at night.
He never says much; time makes no sense
To Him, of course, since He is everywhen
He has promised to tell me if He finds
A road whose bend He cannot see around.

CHILLS

God is feeling cold today

Shivering, He pulls on a wool hat

And wraps the universe around Him

Relays of angels bring Him

Great bowls, filled to the brim

With the Platonic Idea of Soup.  

All meetings have been cancelled;

Prayers, anxiously pacing around

The infinite waiting-room

Have started answering each other.

SPIDER IN THE HANDS

In tenth grade I read Sinners
In the Hands of an Angry God
There, Jonathan Edwards
Posits that every man is,
For all intents and purposes,
An unusually loathsome spider
Appallingly ugly, unable
To tell a joke without
Laughing at it himself
A spider who never
Pays child support ;
He probably smokes
And spits in spider soup.
This awful bug
Is being held by God
Over a roaring fire
By a very thin thread --
Since even God does not
Wish to touch spiders.
As if this isn't enough
God really, really hates
This particular spider
Who is -- remember? --
You. Your only hope
Is that God decided
Before you were born
That this wasn’t a day
For burning spiders.
Too cloudy, perhaps,
Or too clear, or a cloud
That looks like a dog
Makes Him uneasy.

ISSUES

God exists sometimes.
It depends
On His mood. Still,
He has no days off.
When He calls in sick
He always gets through
To Himself, saying
"Who do You think
You're fooling?"

SOUP

When God goes for a walk He first
Has to incarnate himself. The universe
Is His, of course, but if He goes out
As the universe there is no place left
For Him to walk, nor anything left over
To make an umbrella in case it rains.
Accordingly, God throws together
Things He finds at hand -- old prayers,
Soup cans, remorse, hope, the battery
From the 1898 St. Louis Perfectos,
And a few cats to liven things up.
I know a cat who is inordinately proud,
Even for a cat, because she has twice
Moseyed around the docks as part of God.
I have questioned her closely but all
She has been willing to disclose so far
Is that bean soup and fried rice were served
On both occasions. This is bad news for me;
I cannot abide even the very best bean soup.

FOR AESRED

One of the perks of being God
Is existing while not existing
Ayin, who does not exist,
Prays to both, but not
At the same time.
Her shadow
Has holes in it
For which it blames
Moths who are sworn
Servants of the locust's god.

ANCILLARY MATTERS

In a 4 to 3 vote, the committee ruled
That God would no longer exist
But would still comfort the afflicted,
Mete out justice and inspire
Love and wonder, confusion and hatred.

COMFORT

Nights when God remembers being young
Lying awake for hours, forgetting that He
Is the Lord of Sleep, troubled and restless,
Michael hurries off to fetch Satan home
To tell the old stories and to sing
In a voice just this side of silence until
God's burning eyes fall shut at last.

FROM THE SUMMERIAN "ABZU"

I warned God, but would He listen?
Not a chance. He stood there
(Not that there was a there there;
That came later. He stood where
There would have been a there
Had there been one) staring
Into the abyss until you people
Stared back into Him. From this
I date the beginning of all my woes.

AGAIN

At the end of a day, a year, of time itself
God turns out His pockets, wondering
At the stray shells and stones and bits of metal
That have collected there. He does not want
To find shreds of things when He does the laundry
Nor to hear the terrible noise keys make in a dryer
So He checks carefully, and finds in a fob pocket
A blue and green marble, chipped, dusty,
But still rather pretty. He gently rolls it in His fingers;
Feels its satisfying weight in His palm. In a desk drawer
He finds an old star, salvage from a constellation
Which didn't work out, and sets the marble spinning
One more time.

SUFFICIENT CAUSE

Not cat, not surgeon, I
Have not much thought I
Might be God, travelling incognito,
Even to Myself, through the world.
Still, if the Universe proves
Fond of a joke and I
Wake up as Lord of Creation, I
May incarnate for reasons
Other than those of tradition.
Having failed many tests,
Including some I didn’t know
I was taking, I would be loath
To test Mankind (which, by and large
Has done well by Me).
Nor would My first priority.
Be salvation (Not, mind you,
That I’d want to set Myself
Against saving you all; it just
Wouldn't be high on My to-do list.)
No; it would be from wondering
How sawdust smells when it’s fresh
And dancing in a ray of light
Or what it is to hold a child
Or to be a child and be held.

PRECISE

The angels checked their watches
Which they had neglected to wind
Since the Battle of the Crater.
"6:43, exactly," God muttered
As he shrugged into His coat;
"Make a note of it." They left
And the small gods whispered
I might want to wake up.