Hidden

In dogma

is the secret that renders God unconditioned,

on one condition.

“If you are not My people,

I am not your God.”

As fashioned by His people's witness,

a made thing,

God,

condemns the made things graven

images are. Inscribed as born

wittingly of Himself,

God is

(so to speak)

that Father

abler than the most sovereign

earthly father to make

all things good.

God the Father is conceived as

for us.

Purposive,

stewarding,

benign,

He covenants our living on.

“Written in

continuance” in His Book

before they took form

were the parts of our fitful bodies.

As if what's

given with the world is

life only,

life,

and not

(along with it,

in time) at last, life's needful withdrawal,

God's said to let the truthful

keep their lives forever if they swear God

does what He says.

These are the portions: either

I'll outlast death

or it me.

Little matter which

if it's the avowed

God I'm given up to.

That I'm settled in the finite is what's true instead.

Living is a good I don't want stopped

even for the saved.

I'm beholden to it all the way that,

in its one chance each with me and others,

death hasn't used itself

up yet. Mine affords me another day

hours before it's light. Along with the caused

things outside that I can't see, I'm here

ahead of myself again

toward that coupling with the ground

when “I am poured out like water.”

Death's still to be heard from at its least reserved.

Under its breath it primes me to pay up and look pleasant.

Source: If You Can Tell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)