God in the City

I know I should live in the country, but I fear
for my soul overstretching. It might bloat in the light of
all that heaven, bowing over plains
forever reaching and reaching. It might hang flaccidly, torn
between semibreves sung in waves by trees, and the
quietness of an assembly of birds, wading
in a lake at night, mirror-still.
I would utter prayer after peevish prayer,
gulping and gaunt with gratitude.

In the city, you see, prayers often
have to announce themselves.

Here, a girl might raise her head
from the filter of her fingers to hear
two musicians rehearsing in a nearby alley,
huddled between brick walls as their notes
rise over the smoky mess of rooftops.

So it is with the woman, her faith long forgotten,
walking home head-down
between cracks of pavement to find
a creeping blossom, a sudden gift of
the blue of a newborn baby
boy's eyes, that old familiar pain.

The truth might invade
with clenched little fists
upon an office gent, paralysed as he revisits his youth
through children reciting French grammar
on his tram to work,
or it might appear to another man,
neglected at a shopfront, waking to his
dried vomit on the window in the exact shape
of a mistress curved in seduction.

The city coils itself tight around
these hidden communions,
slithering along a cafe-lined gutter,
curling around a panty hosed leg,
wafting up the towering spikes,
winding inside each square cut patch of sky,

pulsing with the blessed breath
of a million impossible people.