God as a verb

Hello friends. The poet T.S. Eliot worked out some of his finer religious feelings in verse. I have devoted many of my poems to reflections on spirituality after a career of teaching and writing about religion. I have hoped to nudge readers into the present moment, to recognize a link between the “everyday” and the “divine.” God is external in the universe and internal in our selves, with daily life being the balance we hope to seek. Best, Gene

God as a Verb

“God to me, it seems, is a verb.”
(R. Buckminster Fuller)

Late afternoon coffee in McDonalds,
I look through old eyes
at two toddlers and swift mother
racing about with food and feeding,
knowing the screams and hyper-action
will come and go, a sugar-spurred drama,
a swift passing of the divine in motion.

Cathedrals and quaint churches display
a solid God, or so we believed for a long time,
before an artist or cosmologist sees
the stones and stained-glass holding hands
in a waltz, rumba or Charleston.
Because inner spirit wants to dance,
things just can’t be still for too long,

Be quiet and it will surge from within,
throughout creation, even from your breath and heartbeat,
or follow me to the garden where goldfinch
and cardinal retreat to nearby limbs
to watch me put out a new batch of seed
and suet, while our household wren
moves closer in kindness to elder hearing.

Bucky Fuller, with his novel shapes,
so permanent seeming, was having fun with us.