“He will exercise his owne children awhile 
to proue their patience, faith and obedience, 
to cause vs to meditate and ponder his word 
and promise, till hee haue sufficiently tried 
our constant assurance of his timely deliuery, 
for it is his property to come to helpe his, 
when they thinke hee hath most forgotten them.”

– John Norden, sixteenth-century cartographer

God is a blue crab sleeping in the mud.  

I dream of God in God’s mud, often, and with reverence. 

I dream of God swimming along the canal,
God’s fins turning in the brackish water. 

I dream of many Gods swimming until all the canal is frothing. 

As a child, I would try to catch God in a fishing net. 

Its net was green, its long arm splintering 
and bleached by sun and salt. 

I would climb onto the dock then down onto the rocks
that lined the edges of the water, and I would wait.

Often, God would be there, hiding among the rocks,
picking over the bones of our last meal. 

I would wait until God desired God’s blue sky
and crawled into the open, God’s claws
raised in supplication to God. 

It was then that I would catch God.  

Usually, my grandparents would tell me to throw God back,
for God was too small for eating. 

One day, though, I kept God and walked back to the yard,
and, hunched over my net, I grabbed God’s blue shell. 

God, in turn, grabbed my hand.

I sang, spinning.

God sang, spinning.

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