Gods Fingers

by Kevin O’Keefe, USA

God’s fingers
 rise long and slender
 from the needle-strewn earth

 his pinky sways close to our tiny home and
 we don’t want to die in bed. 

 It isn’t whimsy or the need for a 
 big sky, that keeps us up at night.

 Last month, an old maple sheared 
 off the wall of our shed.

 In his palm I wish to rest but 
 a black gooey stigmata pools there.

 Sixteen-feet closer where nuns told me he lives 
 his fingers open into two crisp peace symbols—

 nothing goes out of fashion in his open air closet.
 Later this week a pig farmer will come over and chain saw 

 the bottom while I pull a cable halfway from the top in his bouncy tractor.
 The whole morning I’ll apologize for the song of grief called “technology.”

 In the trees’ earth-shaking echo I’ll have my Hercules moment, 
 suspicious that its’ shadow will overtake me.

 I’m told a trees’ roots are twice its’ canopy.
 If so, there’s a whole world 
 I’ll have to apologize to 
 when I go down.