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Whodunit
 
Is there some cosmic lab
where the stars conspire, inventing Life?
Did the parturition of nothingness
give birth to all this glory?
The writers of mysteries busy themselves with death.
But who or what is the perpetrator of Life?
We live and die in the eternal question mark.
 
Goddesses First
 
From the beginning, they must have been miles ahead of the men,
fleet as fawns, nimbly evading those heavy hulks lumbering after
giving apelike yells to establish mastery,
their bellies stuffed with animal fat, their lungs caked with chewing tobacco.
 
The escaping female swung up into trees, while her pursuer
broke the branch and toppled into the briars. It is easy to see
why goddesses preceded gods. The female wit was sharper.
God is a girl, they intoned, and if you don’t believe us, no soup
tonight.
 
The males howled when blood ran from a cut;
the women could bleed mysteriously and feel no pain.
From the place of blood came new beings, small creations of great interest.
The men were always fooling around this secret entrance, exit.
Come on in, the girls would say, when warm and well fed.
They found the male huffing and puffing greatly amusing,
like later on, the TV comedian after the dishes and the evening
news.
 
In All
 
Part of the maker dwells in all that’s made:
in crafted things, the plough, the ax, the spade,
the everlasting flower carved in jade,
souls of the trees that gather in the glade,
beauty of girls, although their beauty fade,
the starry marchers in the sky parade,
the egg in chaste perfection, newly laid.
The maker dwells in all the maker made.
 
To the Worldmaker
 
Why does mankind insist you have a gender?
Are you a scary ruler, punitive yet tender,
jealous and bellicose, with a short fuse,
and partial to an ancient tribe of Jews?
Like Carroll’s Cheshire cat, your features fade,
leaving a smile for all the worlds you’ve made.
 
Games with God
 
I played, a child both wild and meek,
with God at games of hide-and-seek.
I searched in vain the usual places
and found a thousand saddened faces.
 
“Your God is hidden in heaven,” they said;
“You’ll see him only when you’re dead.”
How could I make them understand
God often took me by the hand?
Then as my tears began to fall
I felt his touch and heard his call,
“I never hid from you at all.”
 
I played with God a game of tag,
his mantle flying like a flag.
I gave my God a good head start
but caught him running in my heart.
I played with God the game “I Spy,”
but lost him with my fading eye,
till playmate God in his pure kindness,
printed his image on my blindness.
 
Versions of Jehovah
 
Versions from Aramaic to Old Greek
only approximate the truth we seek.
Quoth poor Jehovah, frowning as he read,
“They’ve falsified most everything I said.”