SUPERBOWL SUNDAY PRAYER

by Richard Cecil

 

 

Where does God go when He/She gets bored
with the same old, same old Universe created
fourteen or so billion years ago? 
For God all travel has to be Domestic.
No getaway from Everywhere exists
unless you count the uncreated Chaos
from which all things were made but to which
nothing can return, not even God.
But who’d want to regress to the beginning,
not matter how nostalgic for lost youth?
It’s forward! elsewhere! onward! that drives people
swiftly towards the cataract of death,
which God, of course, doesn’t have to fear
Lucky God! No existential terror,
no sweating in the dark at four a.m.
God’s not hoping to soar into Heaven
instead of rotting six feet under ground.
God hopes for nothing.  Imagine:  all day long
instead of counting down to closing time
envisioning the beer—no, margarita—
that waits for you at home, its salty rim
you lick despite high blood pressure risk,
You are and were and will forever be
the Center and the Rim, the Start and Finish.
While, down here on Earth, it’s February—
Midwesterners thumb through their cruise brochures,
and shivering birds eye thawing ground for worms—
up where You are its always like Hawaii.
You could zip off to a distant galaxy
or take a two week break on Alpha Centauri
but why bother? You made everything
so everything is void of mystery.
Poor God, You can’t get squeezed into a plane
and flown through turbulence to Paradise
which, the week you’ve booked, is soaked with rain.
You can’t vacation from Your comfy home
and then return, delighted and refreshed
by Your doomed attempt to have some fun
away from work and all Your dull routines.
You’re stuck in Everywhere and in All Time—
yesterday, today, tomorrow all the same.
You’re denied the greatest pleasure, ebbing pain.
Before they play, You know who won the game.

 

 

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