Jared Beldon
Credo of an Amateur Astronomer
I could be wrong about many things, including
the spirit’s sweet
unburdening after death.
Maybe nothing’s
heavier
than spirit. Maybe
Jesus walked the bottom of the Sea of Galilee,
and found no friend true enough
to tell him he was dead.
Maybe he’s down there still, awaiting
the
blood-red waters of reckoning.
It’s possible,
but so are stars
fired down dark years, and a boy
from Zuni who deciphered for me a map of the
constellations,
though his faith forbade him
look up at the sky.
We kept to the mown field, because we did not know
where in the tall grass
a rattlesnake
might be breathing.
We tried and mostly failed the geometry of converting
a two-dimensional likeness into space,
while each moment galaxies
slipped off the western horizon.
Though our faces
glow like Moses,
what are we left with finally but a shimmering
veil, an outline of an outline
of what may be the silhouette of God?
I could be wrong,
but I believe in light perpetual and fine, or at least
believe the old, old stories,
like how one distant Fourth of July my grandfather
shot bottle rockets
out the window of
a moving car,
because this is what we do:
we take the fire into our hands
and go.
Copyright
© by Jared Beldon 2006. All rights reserved.
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