Orphans

1.

 

The motherless-fatherless God

orphans the world in His own image,

His experience, His own elevated thoughts.

 

Yet He is unsatisfied, unhappy for

His creation is not perfect enough.

 

Even the little man with His breath-spark

is an unfulfilling design, in tun dissatisfied.

 

Everything has weight but

nothing has fullness.

 

Only the birds achieve effortless flight

and the planets spin easily in space.

 

2.

 

Creation shatters in the layers of night

and reforms in the weak rays of dawn.

 

The moon shows the scars of His longing

and the sun the flame of His abandonment.

 

In punishment He permanently

orphans the land from the sea

and the earth from the sky.

 

In scorn He lets His man creation

people the earth and die too soon,

 

the posthumous orphan left-behinds

of His own abandoned dreams.

 

His child cries out “Father!”

on his forsaken cross.  

 

Only the Romans sate

his thirst with vinegar.

 

He can not listen, only turn away

and resume creating and

spinning far better worlds.

 

3.

 

The orphans of God feel the fatal loss,

the doom of the abandoned earth,

and refuse to cringe or weep,

 

hoping the manner of their death

shall redeem their birth in His hope

even as they lurch toward the grave