Love Song for an Atheist

Love Song for an Atheist
By: Alicia Millar
*Dedicated to Matt

I can't explain the wind,
although i know it's there
I can't explain the coloured arches
suspended in the air

I can't explain the morphing
of the bugs in their cocoons
I can't explain the canine habit
of howling at the moon

I can't account for silver rings
adorning human necks
I can't account for lemmings
and their strange and fatal treks

I do not try nor do i care
to understand the world
knowing will not arrest the clam
from forming its one pearl

I guess I am an atheist
who relies a lot on faith
yet one thing wants for understanding
and haunts me like a wraith

I can't define my love for you
by shape or length or sign
yet driven is my heart to know
our song by lyric and line

that i might sing it start to end
and loop it for all time
and thusly share the love I know
arranged in pitch and rhyme

Yet not so simple is this quest
our love is far too grand
it drives my faithless heart to think
an artist had a hand

for what great forge could have made
a love like yours and mine?
What great composer could have written
Our Poem, line by line?

It could not have been an accident
that we came to love so much
just as David could not stand without
Michelangelo’s fine touch

Nor could the Cistine
draw an eye, to a loftier place
if an expert painter had not dared
to visualize it's grace

Must not the buoyant, joyful love
that connects two human beings
credit power far more subtle
than chemistry's machine?

Was Monet's hand an outcome of
mere neuronal twitch?
Can Alexander Bell have been
a puppet of the switch?

A world where water lilies
are just Egg Shell Number Four
mixed one thirds with ochre
is a scientific bore

A place where telegraphing
the world's first "I-Love-You"
being seen as mere phonetic progress
is a world in shades of blue

I can't explain the world of love
nor the world of art
but awe I'm in of their effects upon
my silly, practical heart