The Good Lord Searches the Good Book

And the good Lord in all His many and varied forms

opened the Good Book, thumbing through the pages,

dogged-eared and torn, taped together in places

and yellowed, to get His words right, exactly

as He had said them, heard them quoted even, in verses

memorized by the children, simply believing, yet greedy enough

to work for the prize of memorized verses, a pin or ribbon

to wear on their Sunday best, or maybe a new Book

by summer’s end, too new perhaps to be soiled in reading it,

but He continued to thumb through His own copy, old and worn thin,

much used, looking for that same verse He too had memorized once,

and still remembered it, but is it possible He’d misquoted it,

for it sounded so foreign now, all these years, eons, since Paul had

written it down; perhaps, too, He was getting old, a touch of dementia,

something lost in the translation, or just getting forgetful, so busy,

His creation so needy, making their lives so hard, so complicated,

putting demands on Him, adding their own spin to His words

in a world evolving, despite them and their interference; all He asked

was written there in the Good Book, even those new-fangled translations,

easier to read and understand, and misinterpret, when what He said was, “Oh, here,

here it is, right under this fold of a page,” “faith, hope, but the greatest of these is love.”