Hobby Horses

What holds us together is our discourse— 
hints and asides, a whisper in the cloakroom, 
School of the Prophets held across the backyard hedge.
Stealth gives Adam-God a reviving breath, 
let Gog and Magog flex their muscle in the U.N. 

And if our proselyting discloses a doubting Thomas,
we simply shrug, our talk erasable and unfootnoted.
We didn’t really mean the Lost Tribes are cavorting 
within the crust, or that the Illuminati has our grinning
president-elect in its hip pocket. Just an idea. 

Like the idea a Gospel Doctrine teacher passed to me
over the urinal once: “This reincarnation business
is easily explained. Each of us has a guardian angel,
right? Who had his own life, right? Couldn’t he 
seed our minds with his own landscapes and faces?” 

Or a patriarch’s musings after a barbecue: 
“As for the spirit, it gives off this definite aura, 
prickly quills of heat you can feel with your hand,
and not to be bragging, but when Brother H. tested me,
I was like a puffed-up pheasant—pure feathers.” 

Angels, pheasants? At least, no one can fault us 
for believing too little. And if thought is action, 
then we’re pioneers—paving a highway through chaos.
Delivering worlds out of a desert of unknowns. 
Puddle-jumping our mortal dust straight to Kolob.