I told myself I wouldn’t be a poet who writes about birds or sunsets. How hard could it be? Everyone has seen a sunset. No one has seen God. When Jesus stood before the sunset, he thought about dying. When I stood before the sunset, the dead grass at my feet seemed less ridiculous than the electricity poles across the water. Clouds were suspended like rough yellow fibers, strips that composed the horizon and, differently, the ice, and, differently, the waves. Anne Bradstreet said she’d worship nature if she didn’t know better. She, the blue wishing she were yellow. I too am attempting worship. The fact that I’ve made life still doesn’t make me feel anything, I suppose because it didn’t feel like I was doing anything. I was in pain, mostly. The sunset would strike me differently if I were in pain. I’d be less flippant. In the brief years I imagined myself an intellectual, I dabbled in Wittgenstein and poststructuralism and still believed God had chosen language as the tool to save us—I drank from both cups. Language was fruitful and fruitless simultaneously. Sometimes I wonder how Jesus acquired creativity and critical thinking. How does a toddler manage exploration without ruin, when does creation become ruin become sin, wonder how other poets manage to write about God, manage earnestness. My confirmation verse was the one about God working all things for good—I was in puberty, which makes sense—but the verse that has seen me into my childbearing years is the one the man says over his dying son—Lord I believe, help me overcome my unbelief. And I want to be saved. When I took all the baby clothes out of storage they were ruined all that spat up milk staining the fibers yellow no hope all of it ended up in the trash though the internet told me to try a bathtub of Oxyclean I thought I could write about God about substance and God beauty. I wanted to write a poem to end with Solo Deo Gloria the way my theatre professor ended all his emails, but nothing I say feels beautiful or pure enough and why would you ever hold a mirror to a sunset?