Listen, God: I am not Abraham.
I do not want a world-full of children, a new
heaven, a new earth. I do not want a kingdom
or a throne. I do not know what a principality is,
but it smells more of government class than paradise.
Powers? Perhaps: if they are the right ones.
I want whatever power the tern has, as it stoops
to the mirrored water. I want the frank heat of brushfire;
its hideous, magnetic leaping. The power of the milk snake
to slide into life and out of it, a fruiting body
of the world itself: give me that.
I have never felt at home here, God. I used to be
so proud of that: the coats and skins, the secret conceit
of homesickness. But I am tired of separation,
of distractions, this relentless thinking. Reduce me
to a moment, a dumb gathering of proteins briefly
awake. Give me whalesong and instinct,
the pigeon’s faultless navigation, gills. Let me slip naked
through this world, feathered, furred,
leathery. Let the wave of my body gather,
crest, crash on the sand, return in aquifers
and alkaline pools. I have been in the world so long, God.
I am lonely. Make me of it.
I am not Abraham, God, you know that. I am not
even Sarah. You have promised good gifts:
make me a sea lion in a pod. Make me unafraid of drowning,
diving tirelessly, full of joy in my body made of water.
