The Way God Paints

(Found here)

God chooses ultramarine

blue of course Me I’m burnt umber

that reddish-brown color There we stand

braving the white and

deckled edge of a cotton page

smooth paper of the hand-made sort

God takes his big fat

squirrel-hair brush

mops clear water across every inch

The sheen settles and God

says Go A blop of blue and

something like sky falls

seeps and spreads fans

into my skyline the place

where blue and brown bleed

into gray Thunderheads

blossom between mine and Thine’s

lines I’m afraid it’s too dark so I wipe it

with my hand as if that smudge

won’t still look like rain’s a-comin’

an imminent downpour

I daub burnt brown into the damp horizon

just to be clear there is one a muddy

kind of transparency regarding

our differences I confess

I’ve spoiled the scene overworked the day

God just stands there watches it dry

I’m thinking oh for the love

God you can use another color something brilliant

like yellow ochre

or new gamboge do some sun somewhere

and oh so slowly God dips his brush

into the blackest black

scribbles across the top

an audacious signature

like birds seen from afar

You have to stand back to see it

See those birds are taking off

aloft and flying whoa they’re actually flying

off the page No no no this cannot be

but there you are no there I am

borne along on their soaring wing

as light beyond color bursts

all joy

with fear and sorrow

The torrent a bluish rain of tears

brushed away

by the palm of His hand

~Susan Cowger