“Be Still and Know” mixed media on wood, painted circa 2005
This Thing, It would not speak to me.
It has no words, nor, as I see,
no iconography that will suffice
to depict clearly Its device.
It takes no rise from words or deeds,
but, being, oddly, It concedes
an insouciant assurance
of Its perpetual occurrence.
This thing, it seems…It Is…volition.
And that’s the whole of Its condition.
With ceaseless verbal diarrhea
I’ve been to war with that idea.
Demanding that This Thing respect
the shock troops of my intellect,
I took that huge unquantifiable
to blows with my sure and reliable
self-conceit…without requite.
This Thing just was…It would not fight.
I, rhetoric weary, acquiesced.
In my submission, It expressed
That farts in breezes mean as much
if I with language hope to touch
divinity, or would advance,
with my corporeal arrogance,
to some more conscious point of view.
And yet…This Thing, should it imbue
all my relentless diatribing,
and like endeavors towards describing
what It is…with Its own essence,
then It’s expressed in my incessance.
And so It is…And so I Am,
accidentally if at all prophetic,
But grateful, and, as This Thing is,
divinely unapologetic.
