I’m not sure whether this is a poem, a meditation, or an experiment. And I almosthope you find it confusing. You see, we all know what pronouns are. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines them as “a word used instead of a noun to designate a person or thing already known…” In theory, then, a pronoun  is simply a stand-in. But a pronoun  is also a word in its own right; the choice of pronoun has its own implications. It conveys singular or plural, gender, and even the closeness of the relationship. So how, I wondered, do the pronouns we use for God affect our perceptions of that, umm, whatever?

...Can one still be one when two are one?

Now I am We, and They are I

And He and She are You and Me— 

And I don’t know who I is anymore.

In this summer of 2018, as a heat wave covered North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts, my thoughts turned to those who do not have air-conditioning. 

Heat is not an adjective.

It is a thing, a physical being, an octopus

that wraps its tentacles around my neck, my shoulders.....

I slide into the water,

like slipping into a silk robe.

I have left my concerns with my clothes.

In the water, I have no weight, no body, no burden.

Soft velvet caresses me everywhere; 

I have no private parts. 

I watch a friend aging and fading. The process of dying is not for the faint-hearted.

A poem about women who prefer to remain subservient to dominant men. Not necessarily about Melania.