The Incarnate Creator

Light falls on the door in an oblique plane of cream

like something in Vermeer, and comes into this room,

to be met by red and blue Fisher-Price disarray.

Out in the yard, bare oak branches sway

in the warm April breeze. A red jacket lies thrown

over a cream chair, where Dr. Seuss sits on loan

from the downtown library.

Here are all the books

he carefully thumbs; here is the bedroom mirror he looks

at in the morning; here are the blue stairs he loves to climb

with unsteady but careless steps. Life is here, and time

has little meaning in the abundance he provides.

This home’s narrow rooms scarcely contain his wide-ranging strides,

as he considers the territory he finds day by day.

He waves his hand and epiphanies forth what he may.

Just over there, for instance, beyond the lighted door,

is the world he has created, creates, with every Word:

Door, Light, Sun, Tree, Upstairs and Down, the manifold

outsplashing of the thing-ness streaming forth from of old.

Angels shine in the oak, as for Blake, beyond the lighted door

and announce mortal hope, Life Incarnate, once more.

He creates. He proclaims. What he says is, is.

The paradox: Eternity within Time. Always, he lives.