SOME FAITH
God we need rain. And white flowers.
Petals mimicking teeth and eggshells.
And don’t forget the christening gown.
Though lapsed I still respond to Holy Water,
all the fingers before me, all the fingers to come,
adding to a familial juice, whose trace on my forehead
foretells a boatload of trombones.
Doesn’t it startle you to walk into the kitchen
and find a cockroach belly-up, wonder how long
it took to roll onto its back or was it
one heroic flip, legs and antennae reaching skyward,
defying gravity, that evasive everywhere force
still shaking off our big-brain attempts to explain it,
while walking on our blue ball rotating at a 1000 mph,
but just walking on the ground
feels miraculous.
Once in a Moroccan market
I watched a man and his donkey deliver bread to a stall,
and after one round flat loaf fell
on the dusty cobblestones, he picked it up,
brushed it off, and kissed it.
I’d have eaten that bread, hugged the donkey,
danced with the kissing man, one hand in the air,
waving the way an olive branch waves in a slow wind,
the amber notes of oud music
vibrating in my heart.
