A GOD TO BELONG TO
I want to kiss as I want
to weed the garden—a cleansing.
This, too, is how God would kiss,
I imagine. I am myself also
a God. Because my body, too,
housing surprise at the grand narratives
we’ve created. Heaven, Hell—
just other words for garages bloated full
of belongings from the dead. I am walking
and I remember something that you wrote:
“be your best gifter.” You, sweet friend,
who are also a God and you knew it, which is why
you are no place and every place. Which is why
when I walk I walk to pay attention. There are kittens
or a newborn crying from the house nearby,
who can tell? Dahlias in dusk light
from a stop sign in the rain.
I am thinking about the last of the milk
weed flying about the yard and how it is erotic
turning to tuft like that as it does, unfurled
in its last becoming. God is the romance of the world
trying to free itself. Of this, I am sure
as I stand in front of these autumn dahlias. I reach
out to touch them like sun fingering contrast
into the day and I think again of the fool that
I want to become. An unlocked thing: the milkweed,
the kittens and newborns in new skin
sagging in the dusk light—all Gods
in their quiet declarations—showing in a moment
all it is we can belong to.
Rebecca Maillet is a poet, an educator, a lover of the earth, and is deeply committed to educational justice. She teaches and studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is a PhD candidate in English. She currently lives in Northampton, MA with her beloved dog, Oliver.