GAS GRACE

Lord make us truly thankful for what we are about

Five billion years since a star turned on
a star to guide us a sun by which to reckon years
through revolutions of aggregates of planetesimals

Four billion years of photons massless falling on water
black carbon the while daisy chaining up itself most wondrous and most beautiful
all earth blooming with bullies and victims and bystanders

God said let there be lipids

Half a billion years of bags of lipids now swarming now spawning
now buried downpressed now bubbling up in sponges of rock flammable
there for their descendants to find to suck to burn and not to yield

Their exhalations a sweet savor in the Lord's nostrils

Now see mister our hungry Hummers must be fed
(threes mostly truth to tell but who could resist the low payments)
how their little faces upturned rebuke us if we fill not up

Hydrocarbon fires boil water driving trains of leaping leptons Sandy
else how would we know whos ahead on Idol
or if Obama be snoring or his blacklight be failing and with it all hope

And ever make us mindful of the needs

Of them who dwell in Phoenix and in Bullhead City and along the Gas Coast
and of shivering humble cabin folks from Maine to Magadan
let the AC not crap out let the woodfires snap crackle pop

Thy will be done as long as it dont cost too friggin much

--June 2008