Editors Note: I asked my friend Aaron to do some poetry on the book of Genesis. He and I share an old earth view of creation. A daunting burden in a conservative world bent on ridiculing us. This is now published in Writing Poems in the Shadow of Death.

Late Evening Indictment

the hill before dark

dappled in shadows of clouds and

then pillowed in evening murk

the curve rises above the fingertips

of pine

that accuse skyward, each

indicting the star to

which it has been assigned

obsessing upon that star from weak and green sapling

to old stone rust green seaborne anchor and oxidized earth

that blackens in the cries of twilight

in the dearth of the Sun’s harrowing voice

and from curled tenderness

and lips like

limp baby kiss

to rigid

aged and

fearless:

these pines wreath the bareness of the hill

like an ascending army

and on the pitch of the worn hilltop

with its vow of silence

I burn the memories of

forteen billion years

under a pyre literal

words

the hill before dark

dappled in shadows of clouds and

then pillowed in evening murk

the curve rises above the fingertips

of pine

that accuse skyward, each

indicting the star to

which it has been assigned

obsessing upon that star from weak and green sapling

to old stone rust green seaborne anchor and oxidized earth

that blackens in the cries of twilight

in the dearth of the Sun’s harrowing voice

and from curled tenderness

and lips like

limp baby kiss

to rigid

aged and

fearless:

these pines wreath the bareness of the hill

like an ascending army

and on the pitch of the worn hilltop

with its vow of silence

I burn the memories of

forteen billion years

under a pyre literal

words