Poem for Glenn Francis Walsh from His Final email to Me in July 2020 (his words in BOLD)

Your words arrived early that July morning, 

well before they had found the tumors

that had planted themselves in your body.

The doctors had found; not your words had found.

“I have this ongoing thought about catching up with 

God's voice out in the universe.”

I was startled by their sound and glad

we could still surmise this and that about

the universe and her birth in space and time.

Presuming we could know where others

had surely failed - all things GOD and so on.

The word’s sound; not the universe’s sound.

“Scientist's have launched satellites to send out signals 

that have supposedly caught up to the sounds and temperatures  

of what was happening at 300,000 million years after the Big Bang.”

I wondered who had first thought that sounds and

temperatures to-be-caught-up-to were actually a thing.

And did he or she or they know that they were

simply the sounds and temperatures on this side

of the Big Bang by 300,000 million years.

And what is 300,000 million years like, anyway.

"They have even mapped pictures of it that they have

said proves the big bang happened."

I hope the pictures show a little leg or maybe a hint of

embarrassment after all that time of being intimate

with the universe’s glory and birthing; with the wonders

of God and God's ways.

Something to make us smile coyly at our familiarity 

with the old gal or guy; or the whatness of WHO-IS.

“(https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/C/Cosmic+Microwave+Background)”

But this says 300,000 years after the Big Bang,

which is clearly a different matter. Mostly because

I think I might have a better chance understanding

300,000 without it being a measure of the

number of years in millions.

But, I still really don’t, anyhow.

Besides, what is a tilde between good friends?

“I have this idea that when God spoke to Moses,

for example, that we could send up equipment to

catch up with the sound waves from that event,

since light travels so much faster than sound.”

Well duh. I mean, that is after all what you started out

saying that the scientists were doing. Launching those

satellites to catch up to the sounds. And, given the

looseness of your tight syllogism, I must simply just agree.

“What do you think?”

It’s not, my dear and departed friend, a case of what I

think. For, the days have lost their luster after your

departure and I fear that feelings are now more at the heart

of what is so very important and not thinkings. And, those

feelings are of missing you and gratitude for our years of

musings and sarcasm about God and his/her universe -

whatever pronoun the divine chooses to use.

I was not prepared for you to be able to see my house

from there; or, for you to climb the ladder to the roof and

not come down. Damn it, I was not ready for this sorrow.

But, I suppose you were not either.

And here I am, left. Left not knowing the sound of God’s

voice speaking wonder to Moses. Left not hearing your voice

in sounds outside the memories of my heart.

But, this I know - and wonder if you somehow did as well -

your ongoing thought about catching up with God's voice

out in the universe, is now a reality. A reality woven into

the soupy layers of dreamlike ponderings that have always been

your way. And still, I wonder if you knew, then.

I think you knew.

Could you whisper something to us all about the sound of God's

voice; it may make the days pass a little less roughly. Maybe something

about whether he/she rolls his/her "r's" or some such. Something that

allows us to just look over there - for an instant - to hide the sting

of your absence. Like you did in life and on the stage you came to love.

Like you did with humor.

The absurd non-sequitur seems so very loud without you here.

But we will try to hold together the tattered ends of life’s thread,

hoping to hear your messages in the early morning dew on the

tractor, or in the smell of engine grease as it rises softly on the

mid-day wind. Let us know what you find out when you catch

up with God's precious and lovely voice out in the universe.

Please?!  

Or, maybe just the answer to the cosmic koan of all

time, "Does God drive a John Deere, a Farmall, or a Ford?