. . . the unknown god, out of which
we all came and into which
we all go,
remains unknown and
unknowable.
Sam Keen
Athenians venerated the Unknown God,
erected an altar. So when you say,
I don’t know who I have harmed, perhaps
everyone, I understand. My first memory
of betrayal: abandoning my best friend
and his sister. This is third grade. It starts
that young. Yesterday at the coffee shop
I watched a girl in a wheelchair cross
the parking lot. Today leaving the grocery,
one man embraces another. A homeless
person asks for change. None of this
is clear to me. In the Alzheimer’s home,
my mother-in-law takes my arm. Today
is macaroni and cheese. When I
leave, I say,
I’ll be right back, the lie
more loving than truth,
I’m told. The known gods are easy
to appease—
admission, contrition,
reconciliation—
but what of those hidden from us,
the way dark matter, transparent
to instrument
and eye, twirls galaxies like plates on sticks?
You say, I don’t know who I have
harmed,
and I say, We will make amends to
them all.
This poem appears in Golden Fish / Dark Pond
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