The best spaceship is Earth,
moving and singing through space,
the wind whipping through
bringing tears to our collective face.
God is not myth, it’s concept;
look it up, Google’s okay, a red
book from the past defining all
words as words, inventions—
we made them, including these…
up. We did not make the waterfall,
the rocks, the snow—interventions,
song-like, beauty with or without…
words.
Wind chime, lost in souls out of
time, God is the good, orderly
direction needed to stay on the ground;
without supplication, we fly
un-humbly off the cliff, where strong
physical facts land, bloody and
definite. There is a power greater
than ourselves, this is a fact,
leaving the atheist looking foolish,
mad at the hatter for not making
us warm enough shoes. Peace, with
or without the letters is a feeling
much in line with the calm after rain,
the end of pain a mixture of symbols
that collide with other words describing
bodily fluids and explosions of thought;
neurons that if not written, would
surely be forgot, time is ticking as
the wind chimes nothing, one, two—
the Earth has again moved.
So predictable until we swing and miss;
we thought we knew so much,
then looked into a baby’s eyes,
a revolving door of life making the
annual turn around the sun so unique
and amazing this 2018 that poets are
on the move too—so much so, we
chime our own winds, try to make up
some new words, ways to say them
so me and the Earth can again be friends.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 