What if God cackled
every now and then,
and rubbed hands together?

What if, instead of being male
or female,
God was unimaginably
worse,
put on pants
one leg at a time,
scratched every itch,
and remained ambiguous?

Why deny God the privileges
and annoyances we enjoy?

Somebody back there
ran God through a car wash
and told it what could 
and couldn’t occur,
like cancer,
acne,
genocide,
or the New York Yankees;
that it couldn’t be a he
or she or even a Trinitarian
they.

Somebody expurgated
day pulled out of night
like a bunny from a hat,
a path laid out
across a stormy sea,
the starry firmament 
thrown out purposefully,

so that now to pray
is to contemplate or mull,
to consider, or occasionally,
discuss, as at an ethics seminar,
when what may be
wanted is wholly other,
alive, wholly free. 

—first published in What Might Not Be