Is this what we look like to God:
A canopy of ice
Whittled from cotton cumulus
And stretched to paradise?
Its vapor vows are sworn to fail,
And yet it casts a trance
Bidding the airborne argonaut
To leap, and tread, and dance.

Is this what we look like to God
As heaven's blanket frays
And mountains poke like kneecaps through
Unraveled stratus haze?
Two palms could scoop a lake of pines
Out from their native snow
And watch them trickle, tree by tree,
Down into vertigo.

Is this what we look like to God:
Our cities built of toys
And matchstick walls and monuments
A careless shoe destroys?
Each triumph, each enormity,
Flattens beneath the sky;
Three hundred thousand lifetimes pass
Before a blinking eye.

Grandeur is kin to fratricide,
Living kin to lament—
So earth swells large by holding still
To greet heaven's descent.
Uglier and more beautiful
As nearness melts façade,
We see ourselves and gasp, "Is this
What we look like to God?"

Cover image by Ross Parmly.