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Faith

By Tim Seibles

Picture a city
and the survivors: from their
windows, some scream. Others
walk the aftermath: blood
and still more blood coming
from the mouth of a girl.

This is the same movie
playing all over
the world: starring everybody
who ends up where the action
is: lights, cameras, close-ups--that
used to be somebody's leg.

Let's stop talking
about God. Try to shut-up
about heaven: some of our friends
who should be alive       are no longer alive.
Moment by moment death moves
and memory doesn't remember,

not for long: even today--even
having said
this, even knowing that
someone is stealing
our lives--I still
had lunch.

Tell the truth. If you can.
Does it matter     who they were,
the bodies in the rubble: could it matter

that the girl was conceived by two people
buried in each other's arms, believing
completely in the world between them?

The commanders are ready. The gunners
go everywhere. Almost all of them
believe in God. But somebody should

hold a note     for the Earth,
a few words for whatever being

human     could mean
beneath the forgotten sky:

some day one night,
when the city lights go out for good,

you won't believe how many stars
Added: Monday, July 7, 2014  /  From "Fast Animal" (Etruscan Press 2011). Used with permission.
Tim Seibles
Photo by: Helen Peppe

Tim Seibles was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1955. He is the author of several books of poems including Hurdy-Gurdy; Hammerlock; and, most recently, Buffalo Head Solos. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts fellow and has been a writing fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center in Massachusetts. Seibles also received an Open Voice Award from the 63rd Street Y in New York City. His work has been featured in anthologies such as Manthology; Black Nature; Seriously Funny; The Autumn House Anthology of American Poetry; So Much Things to Say; and Best American Poetry 2010. He has been a workshop leader for the Cave Canem Writers Retreat and for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. Seibles is visiting faculty for the University of Southern Maine's low-res Stonecoast MFA Program. His home is in Norfolk, VA where, as an associate professor of English, he teaches in Old Dominion University's English Department and MFA in writing program. Seibles was a featured poet at the 2014 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

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