I Only Have God In Me When You Are Near Poem by Robert Rorabeck

We both have tailbones
Which means not so very long ago we
Were fish,
In the greater scheme of things
Those godly days which stretched for eons
In slow interludes between the arc of the sun,
Way back when the Lord was still young and
Adventurous and would spend all day in his artistry
Creating the new words which caused those very things
To grow upon the earth, the first couples in spring
Molded by his hands and breath, and then at evening
Settling down upon the first stoop under the soft door-light
Of his modest middle-class abode, and enjoying a pipe,
He would smile satisfactorily and with admiration
At the two of us playing for his show, the first of our kind,
Leaping through the waves, that earliest sunlight dancing
Upon us brilliantly, as our streamline bodies tried on the
New world, skimming along the young sea and leaping
Youthfully upon his eyes alone—Our only thoughts were
Of each other, and that was all we knew, the two of us our world.

But then one day God was gone and so were you—
There were more of us now, but those were the same ones
I still do not care to know—The two of us was all I’ve ever needed,
But maybe God felt differently, and seeing how we were many now,
And maybe all the same to him, he may have lured you out
And packed you up for lunch, to fry up with some salty chips.
That was when I forgot how to breathe,
In my gills that stretched out and brushed along your silvery sides,
That touched your neck and exhaled into your throat, and you into me,
But with you gone I had forgotten how, and began to drown in the sea.
And I flopped out and began my devolution into Man,

So now the only thing remaining to remind me of you is
That useless hidden tailbone down the back of my spine, that
Still in ghostly fingers sometimes tries to wag—Now, stranded,
I am always an atheist—And though the world is filled up with
All the many things God made into it, I don’t believe in a single
One of them, because I cannot feel them running through me,
Coursing the first purest thought through me—you through me—

But there are those rare days where my spirit awakes and you
Come around me, when I see you trying to jog, putting on your new
Legs he must have given you after he realized his mistake, you moving
Like the first of your kind down the lane beneath the deciduous trees
Shady in Central Florida, the brightness of faith before the faded lawns
Near the University—I watch you go by at 4 am, after my shift is over,
And I am proud, because though you seem to have metamorphosed into
Someone else, I can see you all the same, and it is as if you are swimming
With me in the sea again like those very early days when it was only me and you,
And I can almost taste you again—

a mirage, He only allows you in my
Vicinity maybe once a decade, and that is when I saw you last, when I had
To move away from where you continued to swim in those schools far away from me.

I do not know why you go and do not come back to me, unless it is because
You have forgotten how we once were before anyone else arrived.
And without you, I cannot breath and I am virulently faithless, but in those
Fleeting instances when we share the same atmosphere, it is almost as if
We could shed our clothes once again and let our truthfulness grow outward into
The sea, wetting our tailbones, that I become alive—those few times,
When you breathe near me, are the only
Ones when I allow God once again to enter me.