in search of…

someone went in search of
   God
in the lines of a book
   between cracks in creation
   and I supposed
   such a being inhabited
the clay beneath my feet
    a spirit of wild rocks
and stony places

as if I understood
the quantum universe
any better than the ineffable

a s h e s :
the soul on fire
its residue returning to embers
cinders in the night

d u s t :

      the accretion of all time

the grains of which we are made

    returning in the end

       by whatever wind 

might blow again

     in the wildernesses 

       of the last heaven

the  word
on heaven’s face
no lips to speak it
no voice to breath meaning

w o r d :

  in the beginning

  not an utterance

 nor an inscription

     an iteration

      a process

   in the recesses

 of time and matter

 of space and spirit

    the holy ghost

      of a smile

© BH, 2019

---

I sat beside a woman reading Life and Work on a bus to Glasgow. I was off to read some poems. I glanced from time to time (there was no conversation). I considered the spiritual and the search for God.

Meanwhile, I could see reflected in the window, someone in the seat in front reading about Love Island. Another headline read ‘Sharm El Sake-up!’. 

I had a sense of the sublime and the ridiculous; the secular and  the profane versus divine. Me in the middle. A plain old poet.

[Where the Bowie motif came from is anybody's guess.]