I wonder if they taste the rot bloom in the mouth
as a wooden ship might feel ghost life stir

when planks remember briefly how it felt to grasp the earth

I’m as far from the love of Jesus as you can make it in winter
in this place where a bible is a nightstick

where love is a chokehold
& mortgaged temples grow new wings each year

while snow falls so heavy over the baby in the plastic manger
now the mother’s up to her neck

but even the most trusted disciples turned like locks in their sleep
while nearby a mountain heaved quietly into the sea

Faith means God is hiding somewhere on the rim of this disaster
all this anger mistaken

for righteousness all this white noise

Grace means every curve of the earth will listen
every edge fail

Heaven on Earth means
a land where blinds can never close entirely

somewhere still subject to change