poem

Kathryn Maris Street Sweeper

God scatters where he eats.
The sweeper wheels his cart to what falls.

The broom assembles a pile.
The wind dismantles the pile.

God is the messy wind. The pile
is the mouthpiece of the wind.

Sometimes the wind is bluster.
Sometimes the wind is a mute.

There is the God who listens.
There is the God who speaks.

The God who listens is a gentle liar.
The God who speaks is laconic and hard.

I ask if I’m loved.
He points to the graveyard his garden abuts.

I clutch his hair. I say Am I loved?
He claims his love for me is deep

but zealless. Over the garden wall,
the God who listens, the neighbour,

smiles when I ask if I am loved.
He points to the God across the wall,

the first God, the God I just left,
as if to say God loves you.

Sometimes he speaks through his dog.
Sometimes he doesn’t speak.

If his mother tongue were ‘dog’
or ‘frog’ or ‘wind’ or ‘rubbish’

could I learn that language
and hear that I was loved?

Or would the answer
be something I couldn’t hear.

The Periodic Table won’t revoke
what it has put in the world:

earth metals, non-metals, catalysts.
God’s slovenly generosity

is difficult to gather,
as the street sweeper knows,

as the wind knows, as I know, and God knows.
The sweeper smiles at me lovingly

like the silent god,
the one with the message I cannot hear.