Ineffable

I sit upon the floor inside

my childhood bedroom, wondering why

it is that God cannot be seen.

‘God is in everything,’ I’m told,

but I can see this isn’t true.

He isn’t in my radio.

He isn’t in my Action Man.

He isn’t in the church on Sunday.

Although I look, I cannot see

him in my mother’s shouting face.

I manufacture God from things

left lying on my bedroom floor:

some wooden blocks; a dried-out paintbrush;

the engine from my brother’s train-set;

and a wig from the dressing-up box.

God balances next to the bookshelf.

‘Hello there, God’ I say, but God

does not reply; he doesn’t have

a mouth. ‘Here, borrow mine,’ I say.

I wear God’s wig and start to talk.

I talk like God, or how I think

that God would talk. I open-shut

my mouth, then open-shut my mouth

again as silence fills the room.

I stand there, mute, more fish than God.

‘For God is very like a fish,’

I say, in pompous, priestly tones.

I open-shut my fish-God mouth

for one last time, de-wig myself,

and put God back inside his boxes.