Poetry

This is a place you can ask sacred questions,
find the secrets to serenity and Jesus
hanging out in back alleys. The beginning
of all wisdom and the voices of the dead
are here. This is where you’ll find strength
at the breaking point and a way to break
the bones of contention into such small

pieces, they become confetti for a party day.
This is where you’ll find the best buys
for all the stuff you’ll need to pack in life’s
luggage. This is a landscape from which
there’s no turning back. It is everywhere:
in silk, in steel, in the spaces between music
and the little fires that warm the insides

of atoms. It is in the urge to pray and the price
of good cheese at the market, the winged
migration of feathered things, the brutal truth
of nature and the fragile myths that sustain us.
This is the geography that teaches us that all our
attempts to describe the divine are like trying
to catch water in a beautifully constructed net.

Fredrick Zydek lives in Omaha, Neb.