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My Mother’s God

By Geoff Page b. 1940 Geoff Page

My mother’s God

has written the best

of the protestant proverbs:

you make the bed

you lie in it;

God helps him

who helps himself.

He tends to shy away from churches,

is more to be found in

phone calls to daughters

or rain clouds over rusty grass.

The Catholics

have got him wrong entirely:

too much waving the arms about,

the incense and caftan, that rainbow light.

He’s leaner than that,

lean as a pair of

grocer’s scales,

hard as a hammer at cattle sales

the third and final

time of asking.

His face is most clear

in a scrubbed wooden table

or deep in the shine of a

laminex bench.

He’s also observed at weddings and funerals

by strict invitation, not knowing quite

which side to sit on.

His second book, my mother says,

is often now too well received;

the first is where the centre is,

tooth for claw and eye for tooth

whoever tried the other cheek?

Well, Christ maybe,

but that’s another story.

God, like her, by dint of coursework

has a further degree in predestination.

Immortal, omniscient, no doubt of that,

he nevertheless keeps regular hours

and wipes his feet clean on the mat,

is not to be seen at three in the morning.

His portrait done in a vigorous charcoal

is fixed on the inner

curve of her forehead.

Omnipotent there

in broad black strokes

he does not move.

It is not easy, she’d confess,

to be my mother’s God.

Geoff Page, “My Mother’s God” from Darker and Lighter, text from Five Islands Press, 2001; audio from Coffee with Miles, Audio CD, 2009: by permission of River Road Press and the poet. Copyright © 2001, 2009 by Geoff Page.

Source: Darker and Lighter (Five Islands Press, 2001)

Biography

Australian poet, novelist, editor, and biographer Geoff Page was born in Grafton, on the north coast of New South Wales, and educated at the University of New England. His poems frequently make use of rhyme and meter as they explore faith and cultural memory. Page is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including Small Town Memorials (1975), Selected Poems (1991), and Seriatim (2007). He is the author of the . . .

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