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the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

The “fear of God” required by the Torah is an antidote to religion.

— William Kilbrener, Open-Minded Torah (122)

The future in my pocket, stardust candy

wrapped in cellophane; God the Father slaving

for America; Christians being saved.

Flavor of the day: Brotherhood of Man.

Tomorrow—well, tomorrow is another day

so I will pray and praise Him while I can.

The hungry fear tomorrow and the poor

are squeezed so hard that centuries from now

they’ll be a streak of oil miles underground:

but that is what the hungry poor are for.

“More light!” said Goethe, dying on his bed.

Now let us decompose, pulling Earth’s blanket

over our small faces, shrinking and thankful

for a God our pagan fathers could invent.

The pagan fathers, Presbyterians

at best, represented widely today

interdenominationally

and across all races, tribes, and nations,

meant well. They did not sacrifice children

lightly. They knew God—just as well as we;

they did not write scriptures sarcastically—

in fact, God wrote them. Where do we fit, then?

We are their water; their bones plow our bowels;

each Spring the same horse sheds his sand and stands

over our bed at night, his white eyes rolling,

and we cry for the same God. The world ends

anyway, the same way, before the same throne.

The fear of God is love of the unknown.

I will praise the Lord with my whole heart.

The Old One surely wouldn’t want such praise

as clatters from the clown kitchens of Earth.

The future is the whole of what we were,

so praise must be all the winking-out ways

we have abandoned—left at some altar

that even isotopes have forgotten,

a bushel of fireflies last night’s boys caught

turning to earthy mush in a glass jar.

What of the Holy Bible speaks for God?—

the altars, offerings, the jealous rage?—

the widow’s penny pressed by Caesar’s steed

into the dust of the forgotten dead?—

hot miracles that lick up from the page?—

the crazy happiness of the blind saved?