Considering the Creation

by Jeanie Thompson

Touch it, thought the black unformed,
though thought is a crude approximation of how

it moved. Long to . . . love it, the formless-
formed murmured. Shape into light

was an urge loosening from somewhere,
shape into night and day oozed next, and

next, and next. Then birdsong coalesced
and eyelash turned worlds to storm, and golden,

and heights, flight. At the wedding feast,
Your first thought filled the water jugs with good wine,

even as You knew nail, the stone’s cool shelter,
and later, their staggering joy. Alone among men,

You knew how the unformed furled itself toward us.
Red stain upon red stain, the magnetic pull, the restoration.

Jeanie Thompson has published three collections of poetry, White for Harvest: New and Selected Poems (River City Publishing, 2001), Witness (Black Belt Press, 1995), and How to Enter the River (Holy Cow! Press, 1985), as well as three chapbooks. Her poems, interviews with writers, and critical articles have appeared in Antaeus, Crazyhorse, Ironwood, North American Review, New England Review, and Southern Review. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where she was founding editor of Black Warrior Review. Since 1994, she has directed the Alabama Writers’ Forum, a statewide literary arts organization in Montgomery. She is a poetry faculty member in the Brief Residency MFA Writing Program at Spalding University.