Reprimand Poem by Seth Lloyd Norris Thomas

Where you there, when I painted the night black?
Did you adorn the darkness with countless shards of light?
Or were you there when I formed you, sculpting the curves of your face
and pouring the coals of life into the depths of your eyes?

Surely not.

It was not you who gifted the heron with its elegance
or laughed at the world’s very first platypus;
no, neither did you craft every mountain crag
or make blow the winds that hold the birds aloft
on their wide, soaring wings.

No—
it was not you.

All of this spoken to me
as I sit gazing out a frost-laced window,
Your speech punctuated by winter’s first flurry of flakes
silently whispering together as they color the hills white,
as I sit in awe of Your artistry,
hushed in wonder—

no longer contemplating my own greatness.