GOD'S BEST POEMS

In the beginning was the Word:

light and all life

woke to the whisper

of winged names.

So vast a poem demanded

applause:

Adam was spelled from

the dumb clay, Eve

rhymed of his rib.

But the serpent

who sang more subtly

showed how loudly 

their unambiguous flesh

rang through the hosannahs

BANISHED

the later men began a sonnet

that might tower until

it signed the bright page

of the heavens.  God

broke that verse with a

hammer of strange tongues,

Babel.  Human prayers still

praise that divine surrealism

as, smoky and supplicant, they

float skyward, each asking

for the word.

copyright 2009, John Oughton