How beautifully rain washes the dusty bull, standing alone

in his small square pen, hooves sinking slow, down into the earth.

How calming, the steady circles of foreign satellites above,

clicking and purring in unfaltering orbit, likewise the stubborn loops

swum by fatheaded fish in the ocean depths, slinking round and round

the unraveling blubber of a whale's sunk torso, white clotted cloud.

Gravely do the planets intuit that dead moons are their fellow species,

so too do we sense God. Granted my missions so far have failed,

but I have seen an anthill reduce a pig's head to bone, a piranha

shred ...