Adam’s Descent

By Richard Mather

Adam is a dry rib

but sinews are stretched,

tissue and flesh fashioned.

Man of Spirit, embodied.

Descending the mountain

with Moses, he falls

with the rain, is blown

on the wind; regales

the tall and the small 

with poems and legends

of Jonah; comforts

the bloodied lamb,

the gulping netted

fish; descends further,

into engines, turbines,

hot factories, occupies

the rolling paper mills;

goes down, down into

data banks, the microchips;

enters gates, integrates

circuits; touches

the sea bed’s ribs,

the back parts of leviathan,

white whale; descends

to the earth’s blast

furnace, crucible of mortar

and burning glass; finally

down to the atoms

and quarks

and the in-between gaps,

his immense soul filling

the infinite emptiness of spaces.