God Says 

We can only make what matters to us. 

On the fifth day, we made living creatures— 

Flapping, chirping, hopping, buzzing, fluttering. 

We made tiny mirrors of our own vitality. 

And in the thicker atmosphere of water, 

We made the wavers and twisters, 

The gliders and the swishers. 

We made a poem in the sky and a poem in the water. 

And then . . . we blessed. We gave them the gift of “more.” 

That was a good day. 

But we were not finished. 

The water and the air had life in motion, but not the land. 

So we made the walkers, the creepers, the beasts of the earth, 

With their joints and jowls, their faces and their fur— 

The bones and the sinews, the muscles and the skin, 

The shapes—according to their kinds. 

Another great poem.  

But not yet the greatest. 

I Say 

My mind feels like a rock sometimes, 

Resisting the simplest truths you give, 

Offering a hard exterior to the soft light of your speech. 

That’s the way it is with the poems of life you’ve written. 

I have trouble seeing the living creatures in this world 

As mirrors of your own vitality.  

I see them as “things,” rather than words of a person. 

God, please keep giving me language lessons. 

Help the ears of my heart to grasp the sounds of your revelation, 

And to turn all of me towards you. 

I want to live a life of poetry, 

A life that falls into the rhyme of the world you’ve spoken. 

Give me the sounds and syllables, 

The words and phrases, 

The sentences and the silence 

To hear your voice in the world I see. 

What do you say?