Alef

The first element is Air.

Some say Fire, because:

"In the beginning... Let there be light"

but even before that,

the One - who was/is/will become - "Said"

and that metaphor requires an inhalation

of something - presumably air - the element

that best carries a sound in our analogy,

though what organs we attribute to the Infinite

and whose eardrums that sound caressed

I cannot know.

Yet this Wonder replays for me each morning:

the air hums with distant traffic,

unseen transports of land and sky

mimicking a dull ocean

punctuated by the cymbal of brakes,

and sharp territorial yips warning the other off;

Also the sparse but increasingly insistent

trills of the air creatures

arrive long before the

"Light" is "Let Be"

Air: the parent of sound

impregnating lungs

which gestate mere moments

before vibration is born

- borne on the Air itself

toward receptive membranes

of skin, bone, heart

If a God speaks into the void,

and there is no one there to hear it,

does it make "Light"?