I’ll tell you again about my Allowable God.
He grew up in Sandusky,
in Siberia,
the Arabian Desert,
but we touched fingers,
traded glances in that Ohio town
by the lake.
By that silver plate of a lake,
so shallow it drowned seagulls
and emptied itself in a gale.
But he grew up as I say,
and I grew up in that place
called no place in particular,
except it grew flowers and fish and boys,
and a man with the bluest gray eyes,
the fish envied him.
I worshiped him,
tall on his bike from the foundry
with his black lunch bucket of treats,
so God and I played together,
and grew up together.
Among moons and pewter waves,
sun so yellow it fell like butter on the lake,
and I had no notion
that I and my Allowable God
would ever part.
Lose each other down separate years,
go off and call to each other later,
at odds, above the gears of machinery,
the arguments of a party,
watching television explode in our faces.
That my Allowable God would miss me,
and I would miss him,
and we would forget how to speak to each other.
But I discovered a wireless way
to get in touch.
Like the tall tree of my childhood
when I called him to me
and offered a hard red apple,
and asked how to read,
and he replied, nothing to it,
taking my apple.
And I read like a demon,
the taste of salt,
the book of comets,
the adventure of rain,
the stained glass of a rainbow.
Just dream.
Just ask for a dream,
and my Allowable God,
my friend,
came without cymbals or drums,
came like the face of a beautiful baby.
And I unlocked myself
and opened doors and windows,
and let the cool air in above my roses,
and impatiens and ferns,
and kept company with my comrade,
my Allowable God.