We Want So Much
We want so much for a soul.
We want so much for a man
To know
Everything now.
The taste of that fruit is everything―
Everything we think we need to be
And know and do and have
Right now.
We want so much for a man
That we forfeit his soul
And our peace
To hold all the fruit we and he might ever bear
In our own arms right now.
We want so much in a man
That we force-feed his spirit
In bushels per second,
With mouthfuls of fruit too rich to swallow whole.
Is there so much difference, then,
Between spirit fruit
And forbidden fruit
If we want so much to have
Everything now?
God is not a glutton.
We ask so much from a man,
But God deals in the exchange of the infinitely small
For the infinite everything.
He portions out time in ones by thousands
And in thousands by ones,
But we want so much for a man right now.
We want so much for a man,
But God counts hairs and stars.
He measures in fathoms and fractions.
He writes infinite numbers of names on the palm of his hand
And firmly grasps that one grain of sand
He is perfectly capable of holding fast for eternity
Or for a split second more.
We want so much for a man
While God speaks words without a word.
He can slip the Word in edgewise.
The tiniest seed dropped into a crack in the driest place
Becomes a new thing,
Now or later.
Don’t you think he knows
Where the dormant ember hides in a man?
Don’t you think he knows
The language in which to whisper the breath
That warms a frozen filament into tongues of flame?
Don’t you think he knows
Where to put you in all the wide world
To ignite the spark in a man
And how?
We want so much for a man:
All the things God holds in rolling billowing waves of molecules.
His everlasting arms encircle
Infinite eternal spirits dancing on the head of a pin.
He tracks them all through a thousand years of days.
He attracts them each,
By one and by a hundredfold,
Day by day for a thousand years.
We want so much for a man
That we ignore the drops and crave the flood.
We forget that Jesus steals in like a thief in the night,
Whispering a man’s language―
The one he speaks only in memories―
Hovering over still waters,
Like a lingering lovely scent floods a man
For a fraction of a moment with place,
With smell and sound and space.
It’s enough for a man to follow tentatively.
It’s enough for right now.
We want so much for a man
That we forfeit his soul for a crown to exchange,
But what can we exchange for a soul?
We want so much to be there,
To have the whole man―
The whole soul―
Right now.
We want the man.
We want so much.
―erinrmsocha 2/2/2023
