Oh!

There are so many pictures of god.

Just in the winds…

In cool on-shore breezes.

In roiling hurricanes

wild enough to knock me off my feet,

press me into the sand,

pounding, beating me till I bleed

and feel no more.

In waves crashing like rolling boulders!

And in little ripples

licking and sucking the shore

like a lover, well schooled

in the tender arts of her ministrations…

In the suns gentle, warming touch

or its broiling off the skin on the back

of some survivor, squatting like Job on dung,

pleading for his demands to be answered.

Oh!

I do not wish for death!

For I love the myriad ways

my body can discern

Divinity all around me.

Even to the hearing of its voice in the forest,

in the sighs of breeze-blown- spruce.

Even in the sharp crack of lightning

as a tall pine is split in its prime,

flaming in its own sap

till naught is left but a line of ashes

stretched on the forest floor

like the ashen scar of a Buddhist monk

immolated on a Saigon street.

But,

nor am I afraid of death,

of the opportunity for my incapsulating flesh

to melt away,

my soul free

to join itself, once again,

at last!

to the One Great God

who feels me, now, as I might,

a knat landing on the hairs of my neck,

but,

after,

will I be a part of

as a rain drop is part of the sea

and feels the pull of its tides,

frolics in its depths,

participates in the intent of its mind!

Oh!

What joy that will be!

To be part of that immensity!

(For a while, anyway….)

And after?

Well…I’ll just wait to see.