Holly L. Thomas

Dangling from a driftwood log

just so,

your feet carve ripples into sand,

kin to the near waves spreading

interference patterns,

ridges of light and dark,

standing waves

birthing galaxies.

Your footprints might as well be

doors through the heart of Jesus—

the smallest fragment of fractured silica,

this frail world.

So you stand again as the tide climbs,

wreck the pattern,

ruin some utopia,

mutter a blessing over the unseen.

Seeds break themselves open,

desperate for sun.

Worms digest remnants of the seed's

spent growth.

A penis enters a cave to do its work.

Birth follows, tunneled, slippery, and rank—

take care lest the newborn

slip from your slick grip.

You stand at a tide line, world upon world,

staring at the cosmos in a footprint,

the vastness of one grain a nebula,

one perfectly shaped tear

an ocean.

Understand no thing.

Walk the waterline borderless and empty,

letting it absorb your shifting edges.

Stones with stories you can’t imagine

growl underfoot.

Tears surge with grief, or awe, or recognition—

you’re never sure—

and each tear regresses

back to the limitless this:

Today

you believe the Origin is wakeful

and that all of this—

light’s darkness, crushed utopias,

broken seeds,

all petitions one heart to another,

all songs, all waters, all

imaginings, all fears—

all exist because someone somewhere

once grew curious.

Some

maddeningly vast

innocent

asked

“What if….?”

by Holly L. Thomas 

© 2007