God's Country

© Beth Roberts

From four lanes to two, two by two in four by fours, We come to the calendar place, October, the screen Saver behind our eyes, poplars ticking, the dream. Lucky to be born in God's Country, I return on all fours, All the better to kneel. All the better to see what's reflecting In the eye of one of a thousand bodies of water. It's mud, This close. Could be clay. Ashes, dust. Where's God? Applause from trees, yea, intermittent praise all genuflecting Evening. I crawl down a road, I listen to the wind, I listen To the frogs, I listen to a distant accident, the road home Attenuates to darkness with a faint plink at the horizon. When a birch begins to glow, I eve-dream it limbs, some One good as God in God vs. Nature, where He says, "Some One's coming . . . a pilgrim, bright of body, not dumb."