Pied Beauty Redux

after Gerard Manley Hopkins

When I say God, maybe I mean a being
in between. A sky of couple-color. My God-thought
a too-tight swimsuit, an extra small
rubber band I’ve stretched.  	Am stretching. If I’m to hold this relic
in my soul, I want it
Infinity-Big. Room for billions of arms,
hearts, backbones,
buttocks, livers,
legs, torsos,
metatarsals, penises,
pancreases, breasts,
breaths. All the spinal cords & scapulas & hymens & thyroids & sacra.
Patella, nerve,
node. Clavicle,
mandible, pharynx,
larynx. Ribcage splayed with lungs at peak load. Fecund
& fatherfull. Monstrous
& motherous.
 
In a Hindu creation tale, an altar where I kneel:
Brahma split one Self— herself 	and 	himself— 
mating themselves to birth
all of it:        	Skewbald stars.
Marled dark.            	Brinded cows.
Trout.          	Chestnut falls.          	Finches’ wings.
Beaches spackled with sequin-sand.
Landscape quilted.   	Gear & tackle & trim. God as adazzle
and dim, a dappled thing, fluid
like water, like wind.           	Like this marbled world. God as snail
trailing galaxies, home-hauling.        	God as tree: bloom-bright-
breeze-pollinating.   	               They
parent-forth in coupled beauty, two hemispheres
fused in One Wisdom:
Praise them.

Dayna Patterson is a photographer, textile artist, and irreverent bardophile. She’s the author of O Lady, Speak Again and If Mother Braids a Waterfall. She co-edited Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry.