Finding God

“God is everywhere but He is losing.”
—Margaret Atwood

Lately I’ve been trying harder than ever,
especially now past fifty, increasingly aware
of my prostate and other possibly weakening glands.
Trying earnestly to find God, establish once-and-for-all
certainty found nowhere else. Despite those risks toward
disappointment upon which faith depends.

God knows I’d like to keep up hope notwithstanding uncertain
glands, hair loss, bifocals. My mind’s lucid still, though often
adrift like those green and amber globes tossed up after storms
on the Pacific coast. This is evidence of some absence beckoning,
defined by distance. The nets vanished with no sign of fish.
Millions of these bobbing globes have escaped their purpose
and float in the world’s oceans, likely to be there forever.

Stay loose, drift easy used to be my rule—and before that
when much younger, Be Cool. Now I suppose no rule fits
a world so adrift with millions of escaped thoughts and desires,
corners of regret to stand in, sand always between your toes.
I am looking for some revelation of God to drift into
as certain as the darkness, then the light mystics always see.

Or even as gentle as this morning’s breeze leans on a passing
hayfield, lifting and bending the overripe grass. When such direction
offers itself go there I say. Trace again the language of light,
stumble onto runic deity in its own sway. There still are corners
of repose to stand in, resting for the moment.