A brief history of God

wordsout by godfrey rust
Incarnate < 3 of 26 >

You are
not who we think
you are.

It was simple at first:
you made stuff in a week,
lived up a mountain
or in a small box,
throwing down thunderbolts,
putting up rainbows,
losing your temper,
indulging the kids—

but the mountain was climbed,
the box was lost,
the lightning conducted,
the rainbow parsed,
the week became endless,
the kids grew up spoiled

so you relocated
above the domed sky,
reserving your judgements,
making careful notes,
stepping down
for the odd guest appearance,
a locust plague here,
a sea parted there—

but the telescope
couldn’t pick you out
from a lonely world
in the empty night
of a sky too big
for you to hide in

so you found a career
as an engineer,
the absent watchmaker
winding the wheels,
poet and priest
guarding your workmanship,
the key in your hand
for when time is up—

but gravity,
the main attraction,
put our feet on the ground
and the moon in the air:
the force was with us—
we beamed you out

so you came to haunt
body and mind,
the great universal
intangible soul,
a moral principle
making the difference,
the cosmic will,
sustainer of life—

but the microscope
found the unruly gene
with random mutation
left no room for choice:
the fittest survived—
you were well out of shape

so you slipped away
to the gaps in the schedules
with alien abductions,
séance and bent spoons,
a hypothesis buried
in science’s pending tray,
personal friend
of the mad and the sad—

but Einstein and Bohr
showed us twice and for all
with a relative bound
and a quantum leap
that the truth is in
the beholder's eye

so you became
a point of view,
an option plan
for long-term reward,
a custom-designed
portfolio,
one more diversion
to lose us again—

Big Daddy,
CEO of the universe,
cosmic designer,
ghost in the machine,
lunatic fringe,
made in everyone’s image—

we've followed you
in cool pursuit
to a certain place
at a certain time,
too easily fooled
by your many disguises:
you don’t let the grass grow
beneath your pierced feet—

leaving at last
your human touch,
son, brother,
subversive, teacher,
hero, victim,
corpse and then

one thing’s for sure,
whoever we think
you are
you are
not who we think
you are.