Needing Rain

Needing Rain



Something about this huge expanse
Two-thirds of the way to the bottom
Of Utah
About being
Alone in it
Makes a person want to talk
To God.

The red and pink
Goliathan pointed rocks
Having been thrown from inside the earth
At incorrect angles
The lines of strata drawn so starkly
Unnaturally thrust from the land
Haphazardly, horrifyingly naked

Can cause a man to think too much
To decide too much
For lack of anything else
To do,
To believe too much
To need to somehow
Relate

To a massive, poking outcropping
Of dirt
And fleshy sand
And stones -

A different layer
Is on the surface here
Than in most places.

You can see clearly and too far, how
Some self-justification
Could be a great comfort
How some self-flagellation might make things change
That never seem to change
How a spiritual man
Might have baked out here

A hundred years ago
One summer
How God could come
How beliefs are born of desperation
The need for some kind of knowledge
To make him solid and full
In the void.

Maybe
God really spoke - speaks to people
He really told - tells them secrets
Whispers history that no one else knows
That can’t be translated
For fellow human beings
Things so intimate

Between the Almighty
And the one man
Yet entirely accurate
Real
Astoundingly universal
Certain
In some singular way.

Every man - might be an island

And if he tried to swim
Across the desert, the sky
This infinite
Cornflower-colored sky
To touch its individual
Round puffs of clouds
These same-difference

Separated, bobbing blobs
Of white air and water
If he could try to step
From one to another
He’d only fall to Earth
And be flattened
By his own weight.

These clouds don’t communicate.

They are seen by each other,
Heard by each other, but each
Must maintain its distance.

Each is much more firmly, closely held
To God

Than it is

To the next.





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com