Module 5 : Deconstructing Creation
God of Paper
I met God in the constellations
That earth chases
Every season.
I was raised by Rocky Mountain water,
Eyes trained to see fairy slippers
Decorated by dewdrop.
I spent my summers building furniture
For the fairies
Because they were the closest thing I had
To angels.
Why would Mother Earth romanticize
An alternate world in the sky
When the magic of presence lies
Under her ozone layer?
The ancients say
Our first Bible was nature-
I laugh,
How could it not be?
Our trees carry the stories of our ancestors
in their fungal mycelium-
That connects the great souls of this planet together.
Time is fleeting,
How dare we spend it awaiting another home
When the one that conceived us
Is anything but apocalyptic.
Sin is not our planets legacy,
It’s religion’s.
How dare we taint her with our complicated relationship with words on paper-
Made of reeds and water-
Holy water-
Holy ground-
Holy God-
I now see God in the paper
That cradles this poem.
I am the author of words
Trying to explain the mystery-
I come from a long line of lungs,
High from the tree’s oxygenated air-
Trying to make sense of sacred and suffering-
But what I know as truth is that God saw the holiness of planet earth
Enough to be birthed in a cave ,
From the vagina of a woman,
Witnessed by sheep,
Welcomed by wilderness,
To preach sermons from the waves,
And heal people with wheat
That was birthed in the same soil
God called us forth from.
Holly Madden