face value

Just read “content” as a means
of comprehending the world.

Flashback to wisdom traditions,
to phenomena at face value --

I don’t recall which book
knew God’s will

as a contradiction in terms,
but I wonder whether the suspicion

that language isn’t “special” or even clothed
carries any theological currency whatsoever.

My photographer friend insists
that light alters the gospel’s

chemical composition first
by analyzing it, then by encoding

the results onto the surface of reality itself.
Which means that whenever we use the soul

as a tool to generate, organize, and frame
the expressive parts of our private

sensibilities, we welcome the reader
into an unexpectedly open prism,

a subjective in-itself whirling
about the limits of the world.