Issue No. 6, God - God Drinks Deeply by J. Willie Garvoille

[“In the beginning the unuttered Word, and a great stillness
within God, and the Void within God and unabridged by Time…”]

As God drinks deeply the green wine of empty space,
it occurs to him! That Word he’s been trying to trace
with a timid finger upon the glass of a nonextant place:

“Ka-Boom!”

After cringing low from the voice of such thunder,
(for suddenly there is Low, High, Up, Under!)
God opens a wounded ear, and listens with wonder

at the result of his sudden falling-out with Silence…
God discerns the constant drone of a stellar ocean
and the consummate whine of its little atoms:

“Shush, now!”

He murmurs, but there’s no nod or abeyance
in the whirs of what have recently leapt into motion…
There’s no way out, no-how! He let’s slip! Galaxies

of shattered glass outrace the beck of His fingertip!
There’s no calling back the explosive expletive “now!”
And now, daily, we pluck at the shards of existence…

And if we (you or I) come to truly understand God,
we feel that first blush of His shame when He,
inadvertently, sends things away from Him!

“Ka-pow!”
And heaven’s ruins rain down about us…
And so, daily, we pluck at the shards of existence.

I think a timid God best,
not the brazen ones who howl for good and evil,
as if there were rough herds of light and dark beasts
confronting each other on opposite banks of a river—
Snarls cris-cross the water, “Thou shalt not drink here!”

I think a God far better that drinks such divisive rivers dry!
And then shows us two sides of the same leaf blowing by!

I think a timid God best, that One whose long silence
is misunderstood, that One who from the final distance
comes at last to simply apologize for existence…

“So, really, how was it?” He’ll say.
“oh, it was a blast!” I’ll say, with an accusatory smile,
“but You’ve still got a lot to learn about Beginnings!”

“Why, you, you…” He’ll stammer, and the stars will glimmer…
“Ho! You are the most impudent! Rudest!
yet truest of all My Imaginings!”

and then I’ll (suddenly disembodied)—umh, hmmh, what will I’ll?
Oh yes—I’ll remind Him again as I pass by, gathering break-neck
speed toward the nearest cluster of stars…

Mind you! Try again! but think before You speak and before You
Think, drink more, and deeply! One day, You’ll get it right!

[“In the beginning was Touch,
and the all-encompassing press
of space that was not yet fleshed.
And God felt the need for Otherness”]

…or some-such!