Feeling for the Switch

Feeling for the Switch

You asked where God is and meant it 

as earnestly as your nightly request

for a glass of water by the bed. 

So I said—with earnest to equal—“Well,”

wishing in the ensuing silence to draw up 

something deep and profound 

I never found. You pried. So instead

I tried, “the words of this world 

are in the work of suggesting 

the next word and the next 

world, like kicking a pebble to pick the path 

or asking a question until you find

not an answer but your way 

home.” Or that’s what I would have 

said—a cryptic response but one 

that rang true somewhere below

the brain, like the God about who 

you asked—had I not spilled your water 

glass, that constant presence 

breaking in and soaking through

your sheets, our very skin.