“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to..."
God said, knowing full well he couldn’t,
knowing how, even millennia from then, no-one
with the best of telescopes that science could muster
would have more than an estimate,
the whole teeming cosmos expanding beyond
anyone’s ken but His, knowing even
the pulsing, expanding force lying cloaked
in the darkness in between, that deep
interstellar blackness He wrapped about Himself
as He reached down and passed through
Abram’s vulture-infested sacrifice, took
full burden of covenant in His onyx stride,
pulling black holes and supernovae around Him,
stars piercing His side with radiant light.
Looked inside the vacuum that was Abram, said,
“You shall have no God but me. You will fail
like every smouldering star you see.
All the same, I Will Be.”
Matthew Pullar is a Melbourne-based poet. He has had poems published in Ekstasis, Poems for Ephesians, Amethyst Review, Heart of Flesh and Reformed Journal. His latest collection, This Teeming Mess of Glory, was published in 2025 by Wipf & Stock.
Amethyst Review 