Charlie Bondhus

Logos

The river of stars is one eternal color

running from word to metaphor,

as in some apocrypha

where everything Adam

couldn’t name

was called “God,” the elegant

redundancy of Elohim:

“Power over powers,”

the name for all

things fixed and far-off—sun,

moon, soul—God being

that which resists

the body’s reach.

Consider the invisible

hand of dialectical materialism—

untouched systems growing

to maximum efficiency

before they collapse—

or the perennial frustration of The Creation of Adam,

mythic father perpetually extending

his hand,

slightly crooked

as if the body preceding it

were a question,

the answer,

one brushstroke away.