Concerning the Existence of God, and: Steam Espresso Bar

Concerning the Existence of God

God is a question, not an answer.

—Kamel Daoud

What light weight faith to be more humbledby wind with its wild palms, crow caws,

a sky overcast in layers of roiling grayand flash. I, who would be cloistered in distant

rolls of thunder, here where rain sheens everything.Or the days I believe my four-chambered heart

is the only constant, my aubade, my aestheticwhen answers are as countless as muscari,

madrigals of blue petals, or star storms,their frequencies bearing witness across vast distances.

Which version would succor me that I woulddeclare it into the very wind itself?

I sting from brambles of uncertainty:such a lonely world, falling into darkness.

Listen, Fugitive God, I speak your name.This pilgrim in search of the question. If I—

Steam Espresso Bar

Today it is about a walk in October. Gilded leavesspinning in the wind before settling, and still

every seat in Steam is taken but for the oneI slip into after ordering my latté,

hot and honeyed, with a slice of orange blossom cake,its transcendent sweetness abuzz on the tongue.

It is a day when an hour will pass as I huddlein the corner wearing my sweater despite the pour of heat

over shoulders from the vent overhead. What then?Letting the mind cut a path through the daily news,

the clink of voices until I am alone in the room,in the dead center of stillness. Asking

myself what, if anything, matters. This and this.I say to God; he says, I know.