So much of God is guesswork. A thought experiment

draped in thorns. If God is only what we believe

him to be, I choose to believe God went walking

one night & saw lightning bugs tumbling

over the surface of the waters. He caught a fistful

in a jar & this was the whole of the cosmos.

He flung them into the sky and there we were,

pupal, galaxies blinking one by one into existence.

Believe it or not, the observable universe is an attempt

to learn the activity of small beasts. Their inclinations toward

entropy. There is a field in heaven where the air is mercy

thick, crickets emulating what they've heard of angels,

angels emulating what they’ve heard of infinity.

I choose to believe there are summer nights God

grows weary of praise he doesn’t have to work for.

He steps onto his porch while his congregation

worships. He listens to creation buzz. I believe

he’d be sipping my grandmother’s sweet tea,

but that is a matter of speculation. We believe God

to be quiet, & so he complies. If you listen closely,

you can hear him taking a heavy breath between silences,

which my mother calls proof. If I ask of what,

she will tell me I wasn’t listening well enough.

I believe that runs in the family. Once I prayed

for silence because I had stopped believing

God would hear me. I chose to believe

I was easier to ignore than appease.

I didn’t hear a bird for weeks.