Analysis of "We Are All God's Poems" by Philip Metres

 Poem Found Here: "We Are All God's Poems" by Philip Metres

What does it mean to be a poem?  What does it mean to be God's Poems?  The title itself is interesting, and there is mention that this poem comes from an anthology.  I've been rereading this poem several times and what grabs me are the images.  I don't know what they mean, but poems are like that sometimes, like people.

I think the image in the first stanza builds a separation from the traditional god that brings light being far away at the moment, "all I crave is light & yet / winter / sky is busy imitating milk frozen in an upturned bow"  The image caters towards the domestic and everyday which makes the separation lost a sense of gravity -- as though every winter season or every season there will always be this separation.

Is the second stanza connected to the first?  I think this tripped me out a bit since I thought the metaphor would continue, but the second stanza seems on it's own, "to be a person is a sounding / through,  host of breath / rehoused & rib scribbled inside"  The images move to a sound that doesn't exist rather the process of creating sound.  A duplication of breath reinscribed something with a rib around it.  I noted how there's no literal sound so far, but the sound of what is to exist.

"you there above / the page / casting our gaze over us wanting / us to be your mouth"  There's a shift of toward the reader.  Funnily enough, there's an assumption this "you" being is god; however, isn't the reader a sort of "god" interpreting language to create meaning?  And every work of poetry is just someone reading and wanting to relate to the words enough to say them: divine or not?

"& what would you say / with my body / bowed to bear the weight of a / line so taut it sings"  The person or divine being observing this poem or person is being questioned on what to say about this particular human.  This particular human who is pulled so tightly, but carries the weight pulling on both sides of a "line" (I noted poetical, spiritual, and perhaps physical) that it sings -- the first instance of sound in the poem.  There is no voice or commentary, just song from being pulled.  Just listen.