"How old is God?"
The librarian hesitates,
thoughts snagging on the crook of the question,
how do you herd ideas to the front of the mind when they scatter from being startled?
How much must one sheer this question down to see the bare bones?
The librarian’s fingers hover over the keyboard,
How do I answer this,
Biblically, Geologically, Personally?
The holy trinity.
He is ambiguous with Infinity,
a deity who wandered the void of space and forged the unfathomable.
His tongue sticking out as he focused on forming a clay ball into Paradise,
prophecies rippling over his mind like maladaptive daydreams;
a man and a woman leaving his Garden, the man has an apple stuck in his throat,
and the woman is stuck carrying the first children on the planet,
a snake kissing their heels with its forked tongue with every step they make in the desert.
The rivers He is etching out now will flood over, swallowing his scrawling’s, an Ark teeters on the Nile’s pursed lips.
Years later, a prophet will come and parch the ocean’s throat with his skin burning from the whisperings of the bush, curing the earth with milk and honey for the sweet feet of Rabbi, who will teach us how to carry a burden-
the Bible doesn’t know this, and neither do the people who will read it,
but God looked at the planets as he carved out a cave for his boy,
and He was scared.
How will they take the news that they originated sin?
Geologically,
He is old as the Earth,
scientists will cut through the “clay” of purgatory and calculate
when His art was made.
His thumb prints indent the decades by every sequin of fossil He sowed,
nautilus,
ammonites, prototypes for existence.
Personally,
I think I know Him better than myself,
and I am angry with Him.
He knew better than to hurt me so much,
plucking away people to make angels - the pew has so much sitting room now -
I can’t hear them in the choir -
Did You make kneeling your position to listen because it is where we naturally crumble when we have no place to go?
I have read your stories, trying to find your reasons, and I keep finding myself -
Is that why you made us?
To hurt through your children,
you made us in your eye,
are you always crying?
Lord -
“Did you find the answer?”
God, why did you send this guy?
Because you are starting to stray.
I am weightless, slung over the shoulders, carried away to reason,
drawn away from the dark that cooed for me to be lost in their recess -
saying to the patron, “How can we limit Him to our rules?”
The customer says nothing, a smile makes wrinkles around his eyes,
and he nods, walking out of the door,
leaving me in the quiet we have made.