To Jason: What I Want To Say

What place is it you go when you recite
that faith’s eyes are sharp?
So far from this learner who would memorize your portraits
of stars and Sudan, poverty and salvation, to be like you,
to climb that stair.  Your eyes survey nature and science for order;
in perfect strokes you travel logic’s line, pressing it like wet shore
under your heels—across the earth and into space
until you stop on that slender stripe at the very throne of heaven,
where you seek reward for your catalog of answers.
Take me with you.  Say there is merit in exploration
and not merely in accuracy.  Relax your fist enough
to wrap your hand around mine: maybe logic isn’t a line but a web.