What About You, Boy?

I heard a poem on NPR once in memoriam of a poet who had died. I wrote his family and got back a postcard from a daughter with this poem (written when I was 9 years old). I found it interesting even though ultimately it misses the point . . . stating, for example that we are all that God has at last. I do enjoy engaging the natural theology that's "out there."

What About You Boy?
by Frederick Manfred

"What about you, boy?
Is your work going along?
Are you still making candles
Against darkness and wrong?
The whole thing is to blast.
Blast and blast again. To fill the Black
With songs, poems, temples, paintings,
Anything at all. Attack. Attack.
Open and let go.
Even if it's only blowing. But blast.
And I say this loving my God.
Because we are all he has at last.
So what about it, boy?
Is your work going well?
Are you still lighting lamps
Against darkness and hell?"

1965, Thorp Springs Press, Berkeley, CA