For M.S.
I want a God who did not
spend all Their love of what They made/gathered/shaped
on the enormity of becoming alive
and singular
and finite
within it,
who is not like the mantis shrimp—
exquisite, unreachable, aware of so many more colors
than my eyes can find or sort
and savage. I want the God of trees
speaking to each other through fungi
and the God of tulips squirrels fail to unearth and consume.
A God whose myths lack Ledas, Jobs, burnings, Catherine wheels,
crosses, stones-as-missiles.
A God whose deep glories, viewed from a hammock
do not preach my wasted life, instead
equal a cracked cup
from which a thirst can still be quenched,
a throat unparched,
a land healed,
a Grail named.
I want the world
where someone may
have already found
the orchid
which mimics
the mantis shrimp.
A spectrum
with no crimson.
Devon Miller-Duggan has published poems in The Antioch Review, Massachusetts Review, and Spillway. She teaches at the University of Delaware. Her books include Pinning the Bird to the Wall (Tres Chicas Books, 2008), Alphabet Year, (Wipf & Stock, 2017), The Slow Salute, Lithic Press Chapbook Competition Winner, 2018).
