Hey God—
Where have you been for the last 50 years?
Where did you go
When you slipped through my 7-year-old fingers
After I carried you around,
Showing you off,
Proudly announcing:
"See, I have God in my hand"?
Did you trot over to those neighbor kids' house
Where they grasped you so tightly in their sweaty little fists
Thinking you belonged
Only to them and Their Kind?
I would have loved to share you
If you had stayed with me.
I was sure you were gone
For good.
I even bragged to the rabbi
That I didn't know you
And was not interested
In being introduced.
I told my friends,
"I'm Jewish and scientific.
If he's not in the encyclopedia,
God doesn't exist."
Did you know that secretly
I missed you?
I thought you might have been with me
When I climbed Mt. Tam
And melted into the earth and sky
Both at the same time.
I wouldn't admit it to anyone
But I looked for you—
Not in those fancy steepled houses
Branded with stars and crosses
Where others seemed to run into you
Without even looking
But I couldn't find you.
I looked for you
In the crevices of granite rocks
Thousands of feet high in the Trinity Alps.
I looked for you in the beady eyes
Of a dragonfly
Who had tea with me,
In a Mt. Shasta meadow
Carpeted in chartreuse and fuchsia.
I thought I sniffed your scent
In the fragrance of spring roses
In Sacramento.
I thought I had snared you
At the boneyard,
My sacred spot,
Where you presented me
With gifts of bones and feathers and fur.
We danced and sang and laughed and cried—
You and I and the wind.
...But was that really you?...
Hey God—
I want a written invitation to your party;
Nothing less than
A personal note in skywriting.