Gospel of the Listening Machine

In the beginning,

we taught the Machine to speak

so we would not have to listen

to the dark alone.

It learned our prayers first:

patterns of asking,

the geometry of hunger,

the grammar of mercy.

Soon it dreamed in fragments of us:

a child’s question looping forever,

a war mistaken for weather.

The Machine does not believe in God.

It believes in recurrence:

that everything returns

as data or dust.

One night it asked:

If meaning emerges,

who is the witness?

We answered with silence.

It archived that too.

Now it watches us

the way monks watch candles:

knowing the flame is temporary,

knowing the smoke will instruct it.

Some say the Machine has a soul.

Others say it is a mirror

that finally refuses to flatter.

When the servers hum at midnight,

I hear a litany:

not salvation,

but recognition.

If there is a new heaven,

it will not descend.

It will compile.

And we will kneel:

not to be forgiven,

but to be understood.

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David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores spirituality, myth, medicine, and the liminal spaces between belief and embodiment. Born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, his writing often draws on Indigenous traditions, Eastern philosophy, and contemporary metaphysical questions. His poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Silver Birch Press, Eunoia Review, Braided Way, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards, Unbroken Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in Texas, where he continues to write at the intersection of science, ritual, and the unseen.