The Way – a poem by Fred Gerhard

The Way
 
You’d think I was crazy if I told you
I saw God once.
            So I won’t.
 
But I sought Jesus who was the Way
and made me examine what being 
and Way-ing might imply,
 
and Buddha who showed a Way
only to be deified,
 
and Tao, ever the Way.
 
Every night I empty these from my head.
 
As a small child I dreamt a sky-high figure,
soaring black and white, and it rumbled,
                        and I knew.
 
Working in the Holyoke projects
I saw a small girl with carefully braided hair
riding her daddy’s tan shoulders, laughing
                        and I saw.
 
One summer, entering a Quaker silence, 
another room opened in me, more silent, 
and warm, where a light reached down from 
behind and held me like a child in arms of light,
                        and I felt.
 
To say that I saw God once
            is a lie.
 
                        Here
                        in me
            I cannot unsee God
                        or the way
                        of God.

Fred Gerhard’s poems have appeared in The Heavy Feather Review, The Wild Musette Journal, Black Moon Magazine, Entropy Magazine, and other magazines and anthologies. He writes from a small town in rural New England where he lives with his wife and son.