Genesis

Nothing came of the dust. This was a grit unbothered by breath. Forms did not form, shapes were not shaped; it stirred, rose, and settled again. I stared and cursed the ground.

Some endless garden was this, green growing life aplenty strung down rows of fences built to stretch their fruit to the sky for the hands of my glory to pluck without stooping. But no glory would come, so what was it for. My disappointment split rivers in four, and the waters multiplied beyond all their intentions. Banks were spilled. The ground receded, the hills bowed under, all was lost to me.

From a high place I watched that world deepen. Dust made mud. Nothing died because nothing had lived. Nothing was punished because nothing had sinned. Nothing was made that was made. And here some spare inkling of the course of things undone arose at my feet.

Stirring, rising, settling again, from dust unto dust with what in between. With some redrinded fruit found dangling alone from a tree of old France. Prized by your hairy hand. With a soldier unfortunate crumbling in trenches there. You write in rain to your mother. With your poor life or rich one trading places and passing like galaxies in the night, and you remembering or forgetting. With you alphas and omegas without beginning without end, and without for now the rising wave. Almost to my perch. Almost to the elevation of regret.

I saw you into creation, but you did not return my gaze. What became of you after that? What ash to ash returned?