"Of the Divine as Absence and Single Letter" by Idra Novey

If our view were not a Holiday Inn

but a fringe of trees, I could say G here

is our greenly hidden.

                                          If we lived

amid Joe-Pye weed and high grass

instead of spackle and peeling plaster

I could say perhaps

                                  I’m listening to G now

but mean the owl, a wind playing the silo,

a sticking sorrow,

                               any sound but the snore

of our latest visitor on the futon. Dear G,

please make him turn, make me kinder.

I’m not far from unfathoming it all.

Source: Poetry (November 2012).