READWRITEPOEM : 107
Light shining in from beyond our shabby old world, or light to be found within it already?
This poem is now in its third draft.
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Charles Bukowski
CREDO
I believe at the root
in breath as a first
principle. Breath –
the intake, the delivery -
is our signature
onto the air.
Next I believe
in the business
of seeing and hearing,
the processes of light
and sound whereby
we inhabit the cracks
and corners of the earth –
the guarded scrutiny
of strangers, the ear
cocked in a waiting room.
Incidental revelations,
accidental wisdoms.
As for mortality,
the cricket ticking
in the long grass
is timepiece enough
for me. Wound up
by the sun,
his spring uncoils
at night and
he dreams in black.
But, as a final article
of faith, I believe in
the heartbeat certainty
of two adjacent hands
on the parapet of
a bridge somewhere
touching, finger to finger,
and breath quickening
to mingle, and this
causing the sun to rise
and the moon to wax
and all the tides to run.

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