“God is strange but not malicious,”
Einstein declared. My husband
reminds me that there are more galaxies
in the universe than there are grains
of sand on earth—10 sextillion
stars, 5 sextillion speckles.
 
I don’t need shrines or temples.
No prayer wheels or reliquaries.
The wind cumulates. It tumbles
over wheat, wave & summit
but its mysterious engine never stops.
Wind—my deity, my dance partner.
 
I turn off the news, zero-in
on the scent of honeysuckle
at dawn, the late afternoon
tap of woodpecker. Frog music
as fireflies flare. The day
opens & closes in patterns
 
& layers like my grandmother’s
lace folding fan. Briefly, I forget
about all this man-made violence.
Reverberations of trauma rest for now,
dormant snakes under soil & snow. No more
man-made violence! No more. No more.