God's Dream

'Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.'
      -Khalil Gibran


My God, I thought you had loved me,
as sunlight dancing through a leafy tree
and the trunk, a rough exterior,
but surely a siphoning pith within.
I held the water on my skin and loved it
and in this way, I thought you had loved me.
 
My God, I thought you had propelled me
like pirouetting seeds jettisoned on a soft breeze
under a great maple tree to land softly
on a canopy of mossy dampness all around me
and yet in stillness, I thought you had propelled me.    
 
My God, I thought you  had written about me,
somewhere, somehow, in a giant book in
a great library, I thought you had penned me
into existence.  I thought my very hands were
the story you wrote; I though your thoughts
had shaped me.
I thought I was a story you had longed to tell.        
 
My God, I thought you had created me,
like perennial plants from the loam springing up
in a miracle.  I thought you had birthed me,
that I was your child.  I thought I had sprung
from your divine dust which was eternal,
not beginning nor ending;
in this way, I thought you had created me.
 
My God, I thought you had echoed me,
that my voice was yours, that we sang
in resonance and you were as ubiquitous
as the wind to my perked ears or the
rush of moving water, a rhythmic drumbeat
of never ceasing sound; how in this way,
I thought you had echoed me.
 
My God, I thought you had taught me,
as teacher to student. As a hesitant animal
follows a trodden path blindly to somewhere,
to something not yet known, but known by you,
I thought I was meant to follow you;
in this way, I thought you had taught me.              
 
My God, I thought you had molded me,
poured me into a diecast of your
natural world.  I thought myself conformed
to by your greatness and the mold destroyed.
I thought I was your original not to be duplicated
or done again;  
in this way, I thought you had molded me.
 
God, in what dream did you fathom me,
in what flash of creative spark was the notion born,
what sensitivity did you imbue, and how did you
see it as a success.  Was I a snail, so frail,  
and did you provide me a shell within which to hide,
 
I see now how you have prepared me for  
my own demise;  
I bury myself one shovelful at a time.
If this is so, who will one day  
remove me from this place.                      
 
               .....