There Is No God But The Natural World

Walking, walking, walking, asking for forgiveness

Telling the great blue deity I won't bow to it like our bodies intended

Telling leaves I am old and tired, so I must pick them fresh from their branches

Watching sycamore trees, eucalyptus—their names poems in

themselves I will not worship, for I have found better in the light of my

own darkened rooms; and besides they are sour like

Tilia cordata: core meaning heart,

green pulpy mesmerisions, cracked like sweating bark. Wielding the

rocky crags forth like primeval monsters of the ancient world

showing us, in our small rushing lives, that there is something bigger,

deeper and truer; even plastic fishing lines cannot stifle that

It still knows who it is.

How can it remind you and I?

The Earth teaches and we pretend it did not give us eyes or ears—only hands  

We teach it about pain and loss to feed the gaping cavern left behind

when we finally wrenched free our connections to it

Only to find on the brink of infernal descent, that there is no God

But the natural world.