Poetry by Joe Bisicchia

Buried Treasure

And so I hear there’s a map somewhere
to God.

That this God may be where X marks the spot,
three paces north of a twisted dogwood,
just a stone’s roll from the dead tree.

I hear we’re all vectors into each other.
If so, help me.

First, let’s find that crumpled map.

Then the far off island to run aground.

Who will we have found?

In the least, maybe each other.

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​Church Building

In our family parlor, children laugh and look at me, their Daddy.

Papa, show us God with your hands, and from where God sends words like kites
unbothered through the breeze, through the trees and seas, and sees. Where, Papa, show
us where God lives and where God breathes.
                    
And I think of what I can hold. And so, I shall again teach. And maybe from their
innocence, maybe even learn what a hand can hold, what it can lift. We grownups love
our children and sincerely want them to know our divine wisdom, as if knowing God is
our gift. And so we somehow show them how to worship. We shape our large hands to
pray, and then intertwine them to play, and with a twist in this gestured game we surprise
their eyes with an epiphany.
 
And this, again for them I now do quite plain.

Near the palms, my fingers dangle as people within this handed down church. Just two
hands together, not heavy handed, just my two small hands together, together making
with hands a house of worship. Grownups may do this or something similar the world
round, together making our hands depict our fingers as worshipers.            

And our little innocents ask for us to do it again. And again. And then they do it too with
their innocent hands. The rhyme as pews goes as planned. But soon they are the ones to
ask if God can fit in our hands as we continue our contortion. Oh, Lord, if I am grown
and wise, how would I make mine that way Thine?

And then, by the real church the children are the ones to see the outside homeless man,
cold and contorted. Yes, again the inescapable misplaced homeless man. There he is, so
close at hand.

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Cornered

In our smallness, maybe we think God’s hand is just too big to grasp.

Awe the monstrosities our hands can shape can only do their best.
Then brick upon brick upon brick, thick walls and hard to open doors
go as planned, cathedrals, marvels, with aisles toward tabernacles.

And then,
God is where we finally know where God always is.

Trapped.

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Bio: Joe Bisicchia writes of our shared dynamic. An Honorable Mention recipient for the Fernando Rielo XXXII World Prize for Mystical Poetry, his works have appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic and numerous publications. His website is www.widewide.world.