The well

God is nothing, and nothing is the sound
a well makes when the bucket descends
and keeps going, past the word father,
past the smell of candle wax and decay
into the negative space that shapes a hand
into grasping at air, and we fill it, we do,
we fill it with cathedrals and with symbols,
with the rattling of empires here and gone,
with words spoken into the utter dark that
are not answered, not even with glorious
poems, and songs, and the nothing widens
as we fill, receives each offering, each prayer,
the way a mouth responds to an unanswerable
question, and still we look into the well and wait
and wait for some sound from Neverland to come.

 

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