God is the Crack

Between the towering red sandstone—

is the deep cut of the crack. And here,

the tree of life blooms –this wise juniper 

with gnarled trunk and serpentine roots.

She is older than memory –

and the wings of her branches drop 

blue-green berries into high desert soils—

an act of divine faith to put seeds down here.

* 

Yes, god is the crack—god is the place 

life emerges—disruptive and outrageous.

Not the ordered heavens where all hums along 

in a temperature controlled starry glory.

But this storm—this rumble that trembles  

our bones, announcing its arrival—

this lightning that blazes through sky,

this precious rain on our upturned faces, 

leaving pools of water in hollows 

of lichen-streaked rock.

*

God is the crack. The way the down of the milkweed 

splits the husk, the way the egg shatters 

into furry body and untried wings. 

God is the way the rainbow of mushrooms

explodes out of earth after storm—

these fruits of the underworld 

that can you kill you or sustain you—

this living neural web that nourishes 

and transforms the forest. 

*

This life depends on rupture—

thrives in places where edges meet.  

And yet so often, we want to curl into the comfort 

of the static—as if this would save us 

from being part of everything—

as if this would save us from the torrent 

of time carving us into new shapes 

we have never seen before.

*

God is the crack. It is the place where the gold 

lettering of your soul speaks its truth.  

The places where the bent and curvy dance, 

where the dandelion defies the concrete, 

where the mustard seed turns

a fallow field into a parable 

that would feed the world.