The gods dwell where counting fails
and answers are not held together by one, two, or three.
The gods dwell where the thunder roars
like a father sent to identify the remains.
Where that Seneca village was burned to the ground.
Soon the trail goes back to that bridge as the sound
of the falls get louder.
The gods dwell as the Sequoias in Congress Grove do.
Heaven is between the beginning and the end, as this
alphabet soup spills. so unaware of what made them want
to be gods in the first place.
The gods dwell in love. Love of neighbor. Love of yourself.
Love of Buddha and love of Christ. Love of believers and love
of nonbelievers. Love of Confucius and love of Mahavira.
Love of strangers and love of the sum of our duty.
The gods dwell where we do not want to find them sleeping,
or walking upright and chewing with massive jaws, wearing thick
layers of enamel, smelling like shaggy, oily, fish guts.
George Cassidy Payne is a poet from Rochester, NY. His work has been included in such publications as the Hazmat Review, Moria Poetry Journal, Chronogram Journal, Ampersand Literary Review, the Angle at St. John Fisher College, and 3:16 Journal. George’s blogs, essays and letters have appeared in the USA Today, Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, the Havana Times, the South China Morning Post, the Buffalo News, and more.
See all his poems on Tea House here.