The Stars Saw God

I found God huddled in my father’s insanity.
There beneath the layers
of confusion—as to why none of us saw the
spinning ball or the parade outside—
I saw his vacant expression shine out like
God-rays through the clouds.
Clarity in absolutes.
And so, when he came down the steps,
pillow in hand, and asked me where
his pillow was,
I wept because he was lost in the confusion
of God.

I felt God as my mother
put her hands on my diseased stomach
speaking aloud as I cried.
And called out like Job of old,
“Who are we to you?”
And with no response, no reward,
I felt I knew God that day better than
all the other years.

I saw God in the way the stars
peeked through the bare branches
in the winter sky.
Pleiades shouted down to me of
their distance and age and
still their nothingness.
And as the sanity of stars—
that post-nebula order—
finished speaking, they asked of me
(of God)
“Where were you when I laid
the foundations of the Earth?”

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