if a tree falls (and No One is around)
(new liturgies against “representation”)
Does it make a sound? The man was white that named the tree “no one,” and so too I was named.
Every day I am sick of God. I am sick of the old God, and sick of the new ones forged every morning on Ellen. I study the cracks in the street and the lines in my palms and pray that no one, no one at all, is bigger than Me, nor bigger than the bustling Ant or yellow Bird, no more vast or wide than the yawning Valley, each grain of Sand, or the Mountain no one put there— no one but the ancient dark, the hungry black that swallows our small prayers. Once I screamed and no one heard me. I prayed and no one did. Over and over I heard echoes in the night, voices like mine calling to no one, other No Ones hearing nothing, wailing.
Over and over, god screams in the dark. god prays to herself and hopes anyone is listening; she forgets her name is god. My prayer is this— I lift it to my own ears:
one day the dawn will burst that we do not beg Someone to hear us, and it will be that morning I paint our name in blood and sap on the throat of the God before me: “No One,” the young and spiteful god of Peace, god of Dirt, god of Silence, prince of Weeds, Steward and Lamb of the unknowable root-tongues twisting in rapture under the mud of the forest— I will testify to Us that when the tree fell, the Woods heard, and when that man comes again to call me by that name— “no one”— the forest will devour him and whisper,
“No One fell in the woods,
No One heard it,
No One made a sound.”
