Feeling for the Switch

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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.


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