Voice of the Whirlwind

 “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind” – Job 38:1

Who is this that disturbs creation? 

Who cracks the bonds of matter 

    and classifies the rubble? 

Who samples the dust in the deserts of Mars 

    and light from the edges of time? 

Who reconstructs the eons of Earth 

    and numbers its mass extinctions? 

What kind of creature could tinker with cells 

    and play with the blueprints of life?

You who’d grasp the tragic fate 

    to recreate the world, gird your soul 

to grapple with angels and demons inside 

    while I test your pride with questions. 

Where were you when I lit the stars 

    and forged primordial galaxies? 

Were you there when I molded the sun 

    and chiseled the moon from molten Earth? 

Tell me how you trapped the gas 

    and tamed the Hadean greenhouse. 

Did you summon the mile-high glaciers 

    and guide the conveyer of continents? 

Could you construct a living cell 

    and craft new kingdoms of life? 

Then engineer an Eden 

    to nurse emerging souls? 

So you’ve mastered the tools of logic, 

    teased truths from tangles of facts, 

captured the core of koans 

    and woken new worlds within.

Can you follow the heart of compassion? 

    Are you able at last to manage your soul? 

To bear the eye of awareness 

    and share the tumult of time with me? 

Across the long ages, I am 

    calling you out of your childhood.

Will you grow beyond your grasping 

    and nurture the world with me? 

Will you one day call me ‘companion’?

By Michal Maňas - Own work, CC BY 2.5, 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=647900