Charles W. Brice: Hitching Post

A hippie sings his heart out

in front of Christ Church, Oxford,

his voice out of tune with

his out of tune guitar.

Our guide, beer on his breath

at ten o’clock in the morning,

says in his best Queen’s English,

“Good thing Old God doesn’t

have to listen to that.”

Forty years later this sets off

post-modern contemplations.

God can choose. He can

tune out, tune in, drop out.

In the beginning was the word

which my histrionic Lacanian friends

took to mean that the structure of language

preceded the existence of the Supreme Being.

Old God must have chuckled at that.

Now Old God is post-temporal.

Everything, even this poem, is in the past.

There is no now that we can grasp:

it slips through our fingers

like water on an infant’s palm.

Even Old God is post-god,

absent at the moment

of his presence.

Copyright 2018 Charles Brice

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Christ Church, Oxford