For Mordecai, who was not absent

God is absent.
This is an impossibility,
but the air feels empty,
so that our cries slip through,
uncaught, unheard,
leaving only a whispered echo
of death. God is absent,
leaving only me
to remember to bow and bend
only to an invisible God,
to an impossibly absent God
Who waits to hear our prayers.

And I offer my devotion
as if I were sure the God of echoes and air
took notice of our blessings,
took notice of our pain.
And I will bend and bow
and offer this child,
a star of blinding beauty,
who will bend and bow
and offer herself to the king.
God is absent,
leaving only her.

And after the bending and the bowing,
into the whispering echoes
of absence and air,
we rise, our cries at last
captured, caught,
to rise above the silent edges,
while the world hangs motionless.

There is eternity in that ascending moment,
and God.