God was a long way gone. From earth.
Picking up speed. Moving right along.
Leaving. Behind.
God was unfulfilled orbiting the sun.
A change of scenery? Needed.
Away awhile,
there were physical things God missed.
Humans barely noticed these familiarities.
Brick chimneys and the families warmed beneath them.
Kitchen sinks. Toilets. Mussed double beds.
A child tottering naked about the house after a bath.
Slathered peanut butter. Bread.
Paring knives. Pencils with worn erasers. Certain scandals. Silliness.
A boy putting a scooped-out half watermelon rind helmet on his head.
A girl with a peacock feather dangling from her nose.
Then there was the time when men held doors for women.
God blushed at this swell nostalgia.
Sentimentality had never been God’s thing. Yet,
longing for home, God missed what, in the beginning,
he had hoped would become the tactile bulk of love.
And sometimes was.
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This is a Western hemisphere Eurocentric poem. In other parts of our world,
a self-exiled deity would long for other particulars.