Don’t You Run from the Lord
BY KYLE DARGAN
This is a prayer, and you should aim it where you need to.
~Open Mike Eagle
I’ve seen God chase down a comet. Not even breathing hard.
Not even breathing, because what is breath to God?
What do you know about that life / about speed beyond
respiratory systems and lactic acid / about a body
that might as well be a blink? How a hummingbird could
instead feel like a land seal lumbering, trying to pivot
and dodge God’s call. Imagine this is why
the universe keeps expanding—why it stretches: it is
chasing the voice of God. Your galaxy has been getting cooked.
Dusted. All that stuff floating around in the dark heat void,
that’s the universe going catabolic, fissuring in the nonexistent
hope of rotating apace. So who are you to run :: human :: it is not enough
for me to call you snail, call you stalactite. Computers
boosted your search speed, but to God you are
slower than an addled processor—every internet tab
open on the hunt for a shortcut or way away. You should
close some windows. Save yourself. Drop the thread,
little Theseus, and give it (—it: you—)
up. To God. To God, who had to send someone
as stoned-footed, as mud-tongued, as me
to (politely now) ask you not bother hoofing and huffing,
that you wade your ears into this wake of God-exhaust.
That crackling is not static. This whole time, you have been within
the blaze you thought you were outrunning.
