It’s all in God’s hand
and this has always been a vanishing occupation.
Some days He falls asleep in front of the TV
some days He gets carried away with reading the morning paper.
But it’s all in God’s hand,
the few billions of us scrambling on this worldly floor,
pushing, elbowing each other for the last grain.
The Lord watches our parade skeptically.
It’s all in God’s hand,
and at times,
He consents the snow to fall divinely –
and when the creatures have fallen asleep,
paints the colossal auroras with furrowed brows,
lulling us generously in glowing serenity and sleep…
and sleep we do.

He dips his quill in the deepest of black,
the black that shines threateningly with blue light, green shadows –
poising it at the center of the universe, He writes

of the moon eclipse over Chile,
of the terrors of Boko Haram kidnapping,
of Zainab Muhammad grieving the disappearance of her thirteen-year-old son,
of disorienting the rights of homosexuals in Hungary (can we? may we?) –
He fiddles coyly with the fate of Iraq’s economic recession and the violence in Sulamaniyah
and in India –
reclining contentedly in His chair as he writes of Somaya’s father selling her for 250, 000 afghani to a relative’s son.
As He hurriedly puts the queen bees into hibernation,
He mulls on the worth of a girl –
but is immediately distracted
laughing at the memory of that one time He put Dennis Rodman in a wedding dress,
and paraded Shia Lebouf’s head in a brown paper bag.

But it’s all in God’s hand.

And glory be to God for dappled things

and glory be to God for the infinite,

for skies of azure blue,

for folded, fallowed earth,

in grievance and reverence,

and all the gaps in between.