Seek and Find

I’m told I'll find God in scripture,

And I've looked,

Squinting into the dusty dark;

The walls there are covered with runes.

I wish to look elsewhere,

In the pressure of the water’s surface broken by my naked foot,

In the dirt beneath my fingernails,

The ant that walks unmolested across the table

And the ant I crush unthinking with my thumb.

I look for God in my quiet weeping place in the woods,

In the beauty that comforts me,

And in the loss that laid me low;

In the unopened jar

The beloved scent rationed from within,

The hat hanging on the bedpost;

In mingled cries of ecstasy

In bedrooms and tents and the back seats of cars,

I look for God in screaming mouths, in blood.

I look for God in cursed, blessed hope,

A glance of supplication never answered;

In the fast, and the euphoria that follows,

In the terrifying openness of children;

In the wall I built to fortify my soul

And the thief standing tiptoe to scale it.

I look for God in the silence

Of your eyes looking intently into mine.

God is there.