Well, Lord a’mighty/Great Spirit/
The Is/Universal What’s-it/

whatever/whoever you are—
I sure hope so.

The when is what makes mortals like me
itchy with impatience—

when will it all be revealed? If it’s at
the very end, in our final moments

between slipping from here to there—
wherever there is—what good does

that do us in these flimsy human
lifetimes? Wouldn’t a great ta-da!,

the pulling open of the curtain be more
helpful in the—oh, I don’t know—now?

Any information not covered in the
instruction book (which went AWOL

a long time ago, by the way) could perhaps
answer the big questions like,

How does the stoplight know to turn red
just as you approach? And what kind

of miracle keeps hummingbirds’ wings
beating 70 times a second?

That purpose of life stuff? Easy:
We’re here to live and grow in love.

(That, and flush, which might turn out
to be the best advice ever.)

What I want to know is how to
comprehend the incomprehensible—

how to, say, describe the color of a particular
sunset, given that each one is unique?

Like pebbles. Or grains of sand. Or,
for that matter, you and you and you,

who are not unlike, say, me, no matter
how some insist that we’re so far apart.

How to define the surprise of kindness
that washes over us like soft rain,

or the blessing of love bestowed or
the devastation of it withdrawn?

Or a moment in time after which
nothing may ever be the same?

Or quantify the joy that leaps at us just
before a child does, delighted by our presence?

How are we granted these eyeblink
lifetimes with a banquet of possibilities—

the good, the bad, the beyond-belief ugly—
spread out before us, and not remember

to close our eyes and say,
thankyouthankyouthankyou,

a hundred times every day we’re granted
on this incredible gift of a planet?