Jeanne Murray Walker

In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929 Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts outside to the yard and question the sky, longing to have the fight settled, thinking I can't go on like this, and finally I say all right, it is improbable, all right, there is no God. And then as if I'm focusing a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up. It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't there that makes the emptiness flare like a forest fire until I have to spend the afternoon dragging the hose to put the smoldering thing out. Even on an ordinary day when a friend calls, tells me they've found melanoma, complains that the hospital is cold, I say God. God, I say as my heart turns inside out. Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck, wipe its face, set it down on the lawn, and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire again, which—though they say it doesn't exist—can send you straight to the burn unit. Oh, we have only so many words to think with. Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone, but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be. You don't want to talk, so you pull out the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up and a voice you love whispers hello.

After George Herbert This tiny ruin in my eye, small flaw in the fabric, little speck of blood in the egg, deep chip in the windshield, north star, polestar, floater that doesn't float, spot where my hand is not, even when I'm looking at my hand, little piton that nails every rock I see, no matter if the picture turns to sand, or sand to sea, I embrace you, piece of absence that reminds me what I will be, all dark some day unless God rescues me, oh speck that might teach me yet to see.