Ontology

 

I don’t know, God

I know you love us

It’s all the rest that can confuse me

Why there is great truth

In nature

We refuse to understand

While we destroy it

Learning nothing but that dollars

Speak not a greater truth

But noisier

So I guess you could say it’s all on us

And we are responsible

But we can also credit you with making us

Why did you do that,

Why are we as we are?

 

We can build

And then tear down

We leave artifacts

That we refuse to learn from

We love clear days

Then smoke them out

With factories and war

Factories to make the war

Viable

Not to mention all the vehicles

We could not pass a law

That says what we make cannot

Destroy us at the same time

Let alone with Earth

I know I go off on things like this

But, really, what’s the point

In planet Earth

If we destroy her?

 

Wisdom is a woman, too,

In a number of traditions

But men are made to ignore women

Treating them like other

Resources

My, don’t they have it wrong

All of it

 

So what’s the answer, God

I’m sure there is an answer

Before it’s all a cynical taking

Climbing on each other toward

An artificial peak

Without wondering what we leave

For children

So they’re left to be like us

Or rebel to find another way

I don’t think I’ll blame them

When they do

 

Maybe our agenda has been

To build another Babel

One structure, one language, one power

Over all the Earth

Determined by us

Goodness, I would hate that

And so would anyone who delights in

Diversity

We made kaleidoscopes

Maybe we should look into them more often

Prismatic colors

Ever-changing order

Not anarchy but beauty in

The light you made

You make

I suppose if we asked to be

People of light

A new adherence to your making and

Your teaching,

Someone would try to pass off some darkness

As the light

Where is your justice, Lord?

We need it and can’t manage it, ourselves

Isn’t there a great mediator, even here

On Earth, among ourselves

Within?

I remember now, it’s love

That I learned in church, even if churches

Forget, hiding agendas instead

Some learn, anyway

And live it so much better than I

These are the ones I need

The ones who live in love

Not perfectly

But persistently

 

We need these people, God

The ones who love

With strength and practicality

Because it’s the better reason

For taking the next step

 

Show us love, Lord

And those who love

The real strength

The foolishness in the world’s eyes

While it digs and flies and wends

Its way toward hell

Each day until the last

But it can’t be for fire of hell

Or fear of it the reason

Love must be embraced

Because it bests fear

Because in the embrace

We see, as sometimes on a clear day

You are there

The God who made us

Allowed the serpent, too

Who gives changes over ages

For all of us to turn our will at last

 

Toward you, into you

Below, above

In better places

And the worst

No peak too high

No pit so deep

But you are there

You gave us will

How about we return it

Using it to do so?

That might be the final irony

You’ve been waiting for

Maybe then we’ll understand

Apocalypse is love

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by sergio souza on Unsplash