(when this poem is read to groups, I will sing the old gospel song, ONLY A BOY NAMED DAVID for the back story.)

I know a guy,
Bill,
who believes in whatever requires
no faith
to believe.
If there’s a stone
and he sees it,
he believes.
“Yep. There’s a stone.”
If you hit him on his head
with that stone,
he will believe in the pain
because he feels it.

Same with a gun.

Bill believes in what he knows
as fact
that a bullet fired
from that gun
BANG!!!
when it hits his head,
he’s done.

Yes,
all of him,
every cell and synapse of him
is dead
and when they bury his body,
and it rots
and all of him,
after a while,
every gut and organ of him
is gone,
nothing is left
of the him that was –
nothing.

Now,
I buy Bills belief
as far as it goes.

Whatever stone I toss into the sea –
is.
In my hand I feel it,
In the air I see it,
In the water,
I hear it
as it skips across the waves,
I believe!

But,
I believe in the stone,
still,
when it sinks beneath the sea,
when I can’t see it,
can’t heft it,
can’t konk my self on the skull
with it…
I still believe in it
even when it’s
way away!

That’s where Bill and I
part company.

I believe in a part of me
I can’t taste or weigh or see
and I believe I wouldn’t
be the me I am
without it.

Call it what you will:
Soul;
My piece of the Universal Mind;
Mother Natures breath;
Divine Benevolent Intent;
Hunch.

Up to you!

Call it what you believe it
to be or not to be.

For me,
I’ve known its substance
without sensing it.
I have evidence of it
that is as much data to me
as a stone hitting
that big fellow right in his face,
smashing his nose bone,
driving the splinters
straight up into his brain,
Lights Out!

Just ask Little David,
playing with his sling while he sings
He’ll tell you!
Psalms is a long book!

But don’t ask Goliath.
He won’t know what hit him
so he wouldn’t know what to say.