FORGETFUL GOD by Charles Harper Webb

by Charles Harper Webb / Monday, 15 April 2019 / Published in Issue 15

“Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.”
—Luke 12:6

      Night’s dark cadenza fades. To wild
              applause of birds, the moon’s cornet-
                      bell ducks behind the blue

      curtain of dawn. Now, from cracks
              and pools that waves have gouged
                      into pahoehoe, hermit crabs drag

      scavenged shells after the retreating tide.
              Gray-barred doves ocarina soft alarms.
                      From green palm trees, yellow finches

      screech, “Retreat!” Yet, in a round breach
              in the black rock, one small orange fish
                      delays too long. Trapped

      in a pool that slinks away as daylight’s
              hard, hot hand slams down, it’s just
                      a fish: no plans or projects

      left undone; no friends or family
              who will mourn. Still, it fears to feel
                      its circuits short out, its liquid

      rhythms quit. Like the prayers of a rocked
              boxer, trainer shouting words
                      that he can’t understand, the fish

      zips back and forth across the ring—
              enormous once; now closing in.
                      Flashing side to side, flipping

      through the air, the fish finds only
              that all escape-routes end. No life-line
                      opens to the sea six feet away,

      its gray chop bluing in the sun,
              its surface surging up and down,
                      forward and back.

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About Charles Harper Webb

Charles Harper Webb's latest collection of poems, Sidebend World, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2018. A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, a gathering of Webb’s essays on contemporary American poetry, was published in 2016 by Red Hen Press. Recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, Webb teaches Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.