Nothing is Far, Robert Francis

Though I have never caught the word
Of God from any calling bird,
I hear all that the ancients heard.

Though I have seen no deity
Enter or leave a twilit tree,
I see all that the seers see.

A common stone can still reveal
Something not stone, not seen, yet real.
What may a common stone conceal?

Nothing is far that once was near.
Nothing is hid that once was clear.
Nothing was God that is not here.

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.
Here in the sun I sit alone
Between the known and the unknown.

***

I've spent so much time in religion, out of religion, trying to find a spirituality that sits right with me.

Right now, an invisible "father" that I talk to in my brain doesn't feel right. Seeing the earth and all she does for us and everything she's provided for time longer than I can imagine, that's a miraculous thing. Some people believe in Mother Earth. Maybe I do. I'd like to believe that the people who are gone from us are content in another place. 

Maybe there's a god. Or gods. Or a spirit world. Or maybe not. Before people knew about viruses, they believed that bad spirits caused sickness. Before people knew about molecules and atoms and the way light behaved, they explained the world in a way that made sense to them. And I'm willing to accept that there are things we can't know or see that are out there. Sometimes in my heart, I speak to a spirit world. 

Here in the sun I sit alone

Between the known and the unknown.