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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Atheist Lady

She called herself an atheist.
So full of her faith.
She had covered her fences with flowers.
Expressed her devotion to the beautiful.
To the way earth redeemed the light
filling her eyes with petals.
Commotions of beauty inside her
as she assembled her bouquets.
She said she was an atheist
as if she was threatened.
As if the world would not understand her.
Her innate tenderness.
She was a pilgrim in her garden.
She had arranged a holy place
for herself.

I will die, she seemed to be saying.
Statues of dinosaurs and an Asian
wise man.
I will lose love and never arrive
at the edge of the sun.
I will never understand the odyssey
of the moon.
I can not be saved from the penalty
of being born.
Of wanting a God so much
to protect everything.
I am an atheist because
I have a soul,
but no mother to turn to.
To say prayers to before sleep.
Come, look at my garden,
without me it would die.
Without God I will die.
Are my flowers beautiful?
Can I catch God with them?

Published inIndex of all Poems