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Thoughts of God
For me, behind the Christian
God breathed the Jewish God.
Jesus was a person of interest
and I wasn't introduced to Allah.
Who knew what God was thinking?
The important question is
whether the universe is
friendly, Einstein said.
As a Jew he thought he knew
but had to ask.
There is no deity
in Buddhism, yet Tara Brach
and other Buddhists talked
about an underlying goodness
that's within, and without,
an immanent-transcendent
permeation of our none-too,
all-too solid skin.
I thought, if God exists
as something larger-than
that wishes to be known,
I might be God's thought
temporarily brought to light
as my life.
When I imagine biting
into a lemon, saliva starts up.
When I try thinking as if
I believe
a benevolent God exists
I feel a bit warmer
in a safe-room of my own
as if inside a small prayer
prayed by God, for me.
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Catherine Gonick is the author of Split Daughter of Eve (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2025). She is a winner of the Ina Coolbrith Prize for Poetry and was a finalist in the Louisville Actors Theatre 10-Minute Play Contest. Her work has appeared in journals including Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Pedestal, The Orchards Poetry Journal, One Art, Of the Book, and The Nu Review. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she works with her husband in a company that seeks to slow the rate of global warming. [This poem appeared first in The Nu Review #7.]
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The opening panel of R.Crumb’s The Book of Genesis