out into a spacious place.
Psalm 18:19
Seth’s Pond, West Tisbury
All things hold together. Colossians 1:17
Two lady’s-slippers up along the path,
a kingfisher, the indifferent moon
still hanging in a brilliant, mid-spring sky,
my son in a sweater in a rowboat—
thank you. I choose to believe
the universe not merely big, but chock-full
with presence. Yet may the pessimist be
right about us—pitiable flecks of dust?
With terror in the air, the NBA
shifting into All-Star mode, and ninety
e-mails to clear by Monday, what is true?
(Why, O my soul, do you prattle on thus?)
A tall reed gives slightly in the cool breeze,
nearly buckles when a redwing alights.
Their voice goes out into all the earth.
Psalm 19:4
So
If all created things speak wordlessly
of their creator—a turkey’s wattle?—
then what do tax loopholes say about us?
Or bombed-out cities? The gossip of blue
highways—quaint, inaudible buzz—is it
praise or lamentation? Could even these
restless streams make glad the heart of God?
Old Madeline (Wind in the Door) L’Engle
says all true art, looking death in the face
and rising into light, feeds “the River.”
O, to be able to hear, unfiltered,
the riotous vertical tongues of trees
and see beneath their cowled humility
the fire that burns yet will not consume them.
May the Lord send help from Zion.
Psalm 20:1–2
Answer Me
Bill’s a friend, homeowner, married man—says
their small lakeside place has begun to feel
too much for them—can’t seem to keep up with
what’s breaking down—and back on campus
“well done” has become a moving target
he quit trying to hit months ago. No
surprise his wish to remain here has quit
on him—Donna starts round eight of chemo
next week. This morning my wife surprised me:
“If Bill decides to leave, we should leave, too.”
What’s left to keep us staying anywhere
when, despite faith, hope, love, we keep losing
ground to discouragement, the suspicion
that no amount of work will ever be enough?
Root out their seed from among the children of men.
Psalm 21:10
Shock and Awe
Little words build, become fighting words,
and before you know it, some enemy
has us believing our cause is righteous.
Which is when our poets, like prophets
or sorely agitated roosters, take
courage and launch preemptory psalms,
smart bombs aimed at the heads of the wicked.
Pretty ugly stuff.
Today, as I prayed
in a local wildlife sanctuary,
two kestrels rose from the meadow, hovered
like the Spirit above the primal sea,
and clarified my way forward. Holding
to beauty, I must leave the rest to others
who may not hear the word of April wings.
I am a worm and not a man.
Psalm 22:6
In Fact
Show me an absolutely placid mind,
and I’ll show you a corpse or one as good
as dead: one in denial of the swill—
the lies of desire—I keep falling for.
Try as we may, we cannot lift ourselves
from ourselves rabbit-from-hat-like and live
to tell of it, though liars make bundles
claiming otherwise. We are a mess, yet
it pleases Him—and let us quit whining
about the gender of divinity—
to be numbered among the conflicted.
So here, among yappy dogs, snorting bulls,
bone-thin cows, let us offer God our praise:
Damn, you’re beautiful; and your handiwork.
The Lord is my shepherd.
Psalm 23:1
23
Roger loathes being likened to a sheep,
struggles with self-esteem, takes the figure
as an
