Natural Atheist

The first draft of a poem written today . . .

I am, I think, a natural atheist;

I can find both sense and a sort of strange comfort

in the irrationality of my accidental life,

sprung as I am from blackness into a sharp and brief

splash of light, my self alive, before the darkness claims me

once again. That’s how it is

and how it must be, that’s all that can be proved;

and surely it’s enough, enough to contend with.

So leave me like this I say, I can do it. How is it then

that I keep coming across God,

not the one who hides in the pages of holy books

or the doctrines formulated by holy conclaves; no,

God just there, round odd corners of my life? And why is it

that I sense this God is wanting something from me?

Not just an image or idea - I could cope with that,

just airbrush God out of the picture,

just keep the stuff I can make sense of, or else

feel there is no need to - no, this is God

bumping into me, knocking me off balance,

changing my direction of travel,

challenging me into belief, into faith. I don’t need you,

I tell God, I can do this on my own; trouble is,

God insists on loving me, that’s the sense I have,

and so I find myself thinking

that maybe love itself makes too much sense,

and the light I live in is worth too much,

for the black to be all that’s next (or all that was before).

It seems wrong that nothing should have the last word.

Of course, I recognise that one of my major failings

is that I could never be a fundamentalist anything.

For all that,

I am, I think, a natural atheist,

or I would be, perhaps,

if only God would let me.