'ON THE PRESENCE OF BEING EVERYWHERE'

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Christ the child is a dry rib in God's hand.  

Sinew is drawn tight, tissue and flesh fashioned  

Into solitary boy-shape. Left to roam  

The fields of heaven, he falls  

Down  

God's high hill.  

He stumbles with the thunder,  

Falls with the rain, is borne upon the wind.  

Finding his tribe inside the Levant, he regales them  

With legends of Jonah;  

Comforts the bloodied lamb,  

Frees the gasping, netted fish; yet still he descends  

Through centuries and continents,  

Into engines and turbines, heat-shocked factories,  

Paper mills and data banks.  

He passes through gates, enters circuits;  

Yet still he falls through land and through water,  

Through mighty mountains of water,  

Brushes the sea-bed's ribs  

& Leviathan's dark flanks; descends  

To Earth's blast furnace, crucible  

Of mortar and molten glass;  

Farther still,  

To atoms, to quarks, and all the intervals between.  

His body empties itself into every other emptiness.  

His immense soul fills the infinite vacancy of space.  

 

Unbelievable, breathless, almost demonic.  

Yet there it was:  

An actual universe, infinite in volume, brimming  

With dark energy  

And at the center of it all,  

Christ the man containing multitudes, himself a multitude  

Of singularities.  

Incredible so much energy was spent on eyeballs, arteries,  

Delicate nerve-endings,  

For an organism  

So prone to train wrecks and tumors;  

That time was lavished on volition and cognition,  

When every product was destined  

To crack, breakdown, expire, decohere, liquefy, atomize,  

In a shallow grave six thousand kilometers  

Above the planet's core,  

Upon a world suspended in a cosmic sphere  

Radiating forty-six billion light years in every direction  

Yet there it was:  

And God, in his infinite wisdom,  

Or jest,  

Called it good.  

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Contact: richcmather@gmail.com

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On the Presence of Being Everywhere is a platform for Richard Mather's poetry, prose, and non-fiction writing.​

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Richard Mather's poetry, op-eds, and news articles have been published in various media outlets and literary magazines in the UK, USA, and the Middle East. He also contributes to online platforms for the sharing of academic research.

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