It Was Not The Way They Said It Would Be Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

I see the patchwork on His stars
how He is holding us all together
in the supposed flood zones

I see how the flood doesn't come
not the way that agrees with the models
outwitting all predictions.

the rain is soothed
going as if in a dream into mist
some other way.

predictions fail.
the bold pronouncements
this and then that

the flood plains drowned
they say. they said.
but the wind is stilled.

love remains
He remains patching the stars
they shine in us

and there is no flood
no flood at all not the epic one
they wanted to come

since it would prove
their predictions true.
no rivers cresting

in the small and ever smaller midnights
I forsee
overreaching their banks

swallowing us whole.

Tremulous, discounted, not in the mix
we lift the lamp of faith
above the dark caverns

and men are angry
who don't know themselves
why they fight so hard

for the floods to prevail
while the floods fail

and the patched stars shine.

mary angela douglas 15 september 2018
WINSTON SALEM, NORTH CAROLINA