The Search
I’m sick of celestial whodunits, wherein God
multiplies Himself like the eyes of a fly,
and blows another version of redemption
into the golden pores of the sunflower,
and inflates the tulip’s mansion with ghosts.
Rubied maple leaves bloody the ground
with tattered clues to the afterlife;
acorns concern themselves, like plump nuns,
with the sacraments of summer that worms
sequester as holy grails. I have lost my way.
I’m weary of the world of deeds and men—
oh world of ten thousand leavings and losses.
The Great Sleuth of meaning divides Himself
too thinly for comfort and dwells alone
in this patchwork universe, surveying our sins
of omission, the falling stars His hot tears—
and love’s the only grace binding us
to each other with invisible threads.
Where does my wandering take me, but
down into the deepest pit of bewilderment,
where my own death stares back at me,
unadorned, unforgiven, unknown?
The only mystery that counts is the one
I cannot solve. Such is my burden, my hope.