Give Me the Biggest

 

Give Me the Biggest

(“The Lord replied, 'If you have faith the size of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you!’” Luke 17:6)

Give me more, give me more,
give me more faith so I
can rip the trees to shreds,
bulldoze the mountains, then send them both
to the sea, to the sea, to the sea
for eternity.

Isn’t that what you meant? It is clear enough, I think.
The syntax is explicit, the images concrete,
the only think I need is more faith to defeat
the stubborn bushes and burning mountains.
Although, come to think of it,
I have heard no reports of flying hills along the
beaches with a dying trajectory.
Nor have I seen mulberries like roman candles
fleeing the gravity that holds them in place.
I have not noticed a single neighbor
backhoeing the hole where the flowering trees escaped.

We always want more,
we always want the meter to read above redline,
we always want the single cure for everything.
Give me the biggest, let the fire spray from my fingers;
give me the fullest, let the blaze be felt from my eyes.

And so, you undo me when you decrease me, and
invite me to
want much less, so much less.
And I am distressed after having uprooted
peaks and shrubs so many times
in my dreams.

Give me, then, the grain that cannot be seen from
across the highway,
upon the pulpit,
and is nearly invisible for those with higher vision
from people-length away.

Forgiveness is more an obstacle than
Everest or the Great Sequoias.