chuck said, our Father did not make the world to be a mystery, for the parent to be unknowable.

earl said, you can’t convince anyone of anything.   don’t try.

earl said, love don’t belong to you.   all you can do is attempt to make it unseen.

chuck said, about creation all you need know is woof, woof.   (the rest is gravy.)

chuck said, the world isn’t neutral.   the world includes affection.

earl said, experience is about process, not substance.

william said, threads are necessary to get anywhere.

mother said, please, take me home.

anna madrigal said, dear, I don’t object to much of anything.

shannon said, if there were more men like you, there’d be more women like me.

chuck said, when they say we’re made in god’s image, image means imagining.   get it?

william said, to his child – and as I spoke, I swam.

chuck said, you are but a whisper on the lips of god.

chuck said, be with me.   whatever you need of me, I will give to you.   ask.

earl said, everyone, everyone, is doing their best to express love as best they understand.

william said, to listen you must first be silent inside.

earl said, the true nature of existence is poetry.

judith said, don’t stop seeing how you see, a needle and thread.

chuck said, there is no such thing as vacation.

god said, just one word to me.   write.

chuck said, faith includes doubt.

william said, mostly listen.   but when you do have something to say, trust it.

god said, you are the creature in the garden who doth teach me the most.   you are my beauty-fly.

I said, the true nature of a thing is in everything you don’t see of it.

I say, this right here, right now, is heaven.   literally.

what is your imagining willing to embrace?
  
  
neil reid © 2016
  
  

about this poem.    is this a poem?  short answer is, I suppose.  although it feels like the oddest thing I’ve written, ever.  question posed is, what are the notions given me that are now the same as being me?  and no looking in books (my only real rule) – if it ain’t alive in me, then it ain’t mine (or not yet).  this is by nature then, very personal, intimate, which is also why only first names are used (except for one).

the surprising feature found in process is that it made most sense in writing, not to explain!  and everything is far less than even the tip of the iceberg.  disconcerting?  yet saying might be like explaining a joke.  and I realized also this reads exactly like real life.  we walk down a street, there’s a bird, a cloud, a plant with a broken limb, people walking past, faces – and we see what we see, no stories given.  in this moment I seem to include the good sense to leave it be.

rev: 11.2016 changed last line, embrace for hold. more accurate.