The Finger of God
When JD told us all in that HAM radio class
Everything in the Universe has an electro-magnetic charge
It felt like my head spun around as if possessed.
That tiny bit of information jammed into my brain,
roiled around until my whole perspective changed.
All the stories of a white-haired God sitting on a throne
Sorting out his progeny in hierarchies of good and bad
Blew out the window. The foreign emissary of physics
Took my hand and led me through a labyrinth of thought
That led to the feet of Moses and taught me what he was.
Plucked from the reedy shore of the Nile, he spent his youth
Studying beside the Pharoah's son, learning about math
And how the stars and planets aligned to guide
Architects' designs of the pyramids. He was an educated man
who explained the Universe to people who worshiped stones.
Thus he wrote Genesis, and of course people even today
Take the whole fantastic tale literally.
A writer must always consider the capacity of the reader.
So I finally realized that the Finger of God that struck
Some primordial puddle of goo is the same magnificent touch
That flares the grassy plains with a flash of lightning
Carves canyon hoo-doos with a billion years of rain
And throws the tides and currents against white cliffs.
Inside our heads, a complex glob of tissue and ganglia
Swirls in just the right mixture of chemicals, animated
By that spark of life. It lights our ideas, toys with our emotions
Until we writhe with wrath or caress with adoration
That One we mysteriously declare as our soul mate,
And believe without a shadow of doubt or deep exploration
How and why we came to be. And when we die, that little
Electro-magnetic charge will journey from the base
Of our spines, pop out the top of our heads to the ionosphere
Where we will abide amidst all the others for Eternity.
And every time a HAM radio operator keys his mic
And mutters, CQCQCQ can anyone hear me out there?
The ionosphere will vibrate with a billion shocks
And we will all buzz with renewed excitement.
Sometimes we are so focused on the task at hand, that we overlook the implications of what we know. "Accelerating charged particles generate radio waves" also means that when the wind picks up dust, gives it a static electric charge, and then plays with it tumbling it this way and that, radio waves are created that can be heard in the low HF bands as AM signals. Sometimes we can hear the sky laugh, but we call it noise because it was not what we intended to hear.