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Jan Myhre's avatar

I wonder if everyone would feel better if they thought God was a woman. I know I do. And God is good! Yes, she is! (The "s" is lower case intentionally.)

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Sydney Lea's avatar

Great! I'll be reading at Bookstock too!

SL

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Jeff Nicholas's avatar

HI Peter, I enjoyed each of the three poems. I like this line quite a bit: "Yet I still believe in the deep footprints of God, know I’ll stumble into them, that He’ll part a cloud with a calloused right hand, look down on me and say, " Thinking of God having, not just footprints, but deep ones was evocative.

Would God say, "soldier on"? Isn't that more what a commander in an army might say, but God, who is Love, would say something different, maybe "Mother on" or something more Led Zeppelin

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Peter Johnson's avatar

Good point, Jeff. To be honest, those choices are more intuitive than rational for me in poetry, though looking back at it now, I think I wanted to mix, as I usual do, the high and the ;low. That, is the colloquial "Soldier on!" which also carries with it the iconic image of God instructing the archangel Michael and his crew. But I do like the Zeppelin idea.

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Sydney Lea's avatar

Great stuff, as ever, Peter. Though raised in the Episcopal Church ("not a Presby, not a Lutheran, not a Baptist white with foam, I am an Anglican, one step from Rome"), my Pennsylvania-German progenitors evidently finding the English Church a surer path to upward mobility than their own folks' Anabaptism, I nonetheless have struggled very similarly for a long, long time. You feel like a soulmate.

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Peter Johnson's avatar

I agree, Syd. I wish you lived closer, or maybe we can go on a final "Metamucil Poetry Tour" hitting all the assisted living places from Ogunquit to Santa Cruz. But I have tentatively committed to do one last reading at Bookstock in Vermont next year. It would be fun to meet up then.

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