David Prestidge

On Process Theology

What was it you said today?
"Don't needle me, I've learned to bleed?"

The prayers. The hymns. The beads. Now this?

Don't you know your confession is like sand
Through the engines of consequence? Television snow?
Shall I consult the Oxford Book of the Dead?
The sages of our century? The flood lights?
Freud, God, Kübler-Ross?
That betrayer Frost who wrote
(you underlined this for me, remember?
The morning they forecast radiation
And it was like Chernobyl wrestled the hair
From your skull?)
'The nearest friends can go with anyone to death comes far too short?'

Freud. God. Kübler-Ross.
God hiding behind the shipwreck of a diseased ghost.
God revolve the transcendent skein with a slight whir and whisper
-faultlessly-
God morning that summer and the rings of Chernobyl.
God of the rings and the hymns and the prayers.
The songs of the dead.
God of the beads.

David Prestidge writes: I think Mauriac said, "If you want a man's autobiography, look at the books he has read." I would add: "If you want his biographical sketch, look at his coffee table." On mine: Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise opened to page 119 (underlined: "...and so from shock to shock you live/ A hollow, pale affirmative..."). Also The Errancy by Jorie Graham. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Coser et al. A folded copy of The New York Times Sunday classifieds. Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations by Al Franken. Nabokov's Despair. A dog-eared first edition of Alison J. Smith: Collected Letters.