When I smell the pine in my living room,
or see the colorful dimness
through the thinness of my eyelids;
When I hear the crackling of a fire
or of tires rolling over gravel
I taste the crunchy-sweet
gooey perfection
that my mom calls “ants on a log”
I can understand, a little,
what they see in you: why they believe in you so much.
I can understand, a little,
that you’re everywhere.
I think maybe they confuse you, a little,
with happiness, with life.

I think very hard about things
like death and where we go
after our bodies sigh for the very last time
like the universe and what happens
when it just ends; is there just whiteness?
Like the billions of stars that are suns,
that may house another “me” somewhere.
These things make my head ache with questions
and I understand, a little,
why they created you:
to answer all of these unanswerable questions.
I can understand, a little,
that you’re everywhere.
And that is a simple reason
that is much easier to grasp
than the universe or the after-life.

What I don’t understand
What I’ll never understand at all, not even a little
is why you, if it was you at all,
created the horrid subtleties of this world
alcohol and cigarettes
the sound of a shrieking car as it explodes
into a tree on the side of the road
a young girl who hasn’t yet seen
her eighteenth birthday
flown to a hospital in a helicopter.

You watched over her;
watched her mother pull the plug
A crude analogy for a crude circumstance.

Miracles arise daily from what we think is nothing.
Is it you who decides who lives and who dies?
Is there a method to the randomization?
Do you ever get so busy, that you just take a break,
just for a moment?
while people who deserve to live go unnoticed by you
past pearly gates
to their early grave? Where was  miracle?

And it is times like these when I look upon the earth,
I know is home to so much good,
but I can’t help but think of all the bad here.
Times like these that I wonder what is left
to worship.