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Psalm 23, a song of ancient assurance

Psalm 23
a song of ancient assurance

The shepherd psalm
If you’ve read in Old Testament
Then you, I think, know this

If your holy scripture is not
Divided so or does not
Contain this at all, I will tell
You this numbered psalm
Is well-known in metaphor
Of shepherding

(Genders of the shepherds?
They have been both when
Keeping sheep and will
Go on this way)

There is a rod and staff
Tools of the shepherd’s will
They don’t sound so good
To modern me, but I

Understand these somehow
Mean comfort and provide
There are still waters, too
These are clean, and we are
Led beside maybe because
We are so tired by then
That breezes off the water
Soothe us all

We are anointed—rite
Religiously special
And there is a feast

Our enemies are at table
But not served—Awkward?
Maybe, though I think it’s
An unworldly sign of triumph

Earned somehow, not
Simply out of injustice
We might have endured
But because, at last, victims
Are honor-placed

There are more promises
Finally, a place in heaven,
There to dwell with God

This song sings an invitation
Anyone might answer, go
Have coolness in the water,

Oil and banquet celebration,
Finally our home within
Forever

All in accepting
Shepherd’s care

Heaven once the peril’s
Done when, as tired
And need-starved beats,
We are carried home

January 24, 2016 5

Claustrophobe

Claustrophobe

Am I trapped on
the second floor?
My town for now
has the greater
accumulation,

And I realize this
is maybe too much.
I look out:

all I see are shapes
of indistinction;
I can’t even see
that well for
vapor pushing
up against my
window, making
visual barriers
in condensation.

The storm is Jonas;
that’s fine. If you
can escape the
hunt of God by

living for days in
a great fish—before
being retrieved by
hunter’s hand (let’s
say)—then I not
hunted by the
divine with the
exception to be
loved,

then I can weather
this—well, you
know–weather.

January 23, 2016 4

Re: Terror Cuts Pay

Re: Terror Cuts Pay

Slices pay in two

A secret ISIS memo
Leaked (I guess that
Phrase defines itself)
About paid staff
Losing half its pay

Benefits might be
Halved as well, at
Least from the neck up

Since ISIS wants a
State and hates the
Past (destroying
Ancient Arabian and
Asian works and the
Scientists who work
To preserve these), then
A state might be
Provided for the

Group, since there
Are uninhabited islands
In, say, Pacific waters
(Ironic), where UN

Patrols would sail
Sentinel so that an
Island of hate might be
Appropriately (by
Itself) preserved

January 22, 2016 0

Psalm 22, a song about God calling

Psalm 22
a song about God calling

Did you ask me something,
Lord—and did I not hear?
How do I know it’s you
Speaking (when no one
Else is in the room) and
Not the voice of another

Or simply my invention?—I
Hope I apprehend when
You might speak, especially
When you have something
To tell me to do

You would not ask of me
Destructive or demented
Activity. Then, Lord, and
Anytime, let me do
What you request, even
When I might (guaranteed)
Hear imperfectly from you.

January 22, 2016 7

On the Cusp of a Nor’Easter
(prose poem)

So my friend calls from Indiana. I tell her of my sister’s new job. I am relieved and happy, because my friend’s been struggling with sufferings that would drive me mad. She sounds well and has a chance to tell me some about her family on her way to church to help lead (in technical matters) a Bible study there. It is cold here. It is colder there (single-digit degrees for many days). When she must ring off, she does. I am at the coffeemaker and place the backside of the phone on a spiral burner on the stovetop (everything turned off). While the coffee’s cooking, I clean out some plastic bottles into which I put tap water to drink throughout the day. Not thinking at first, I place the cleaned-out bottles just outside the burner circle set upon the stove. When I’ve done this four times, I have four empty bottles cornering a phone set on a burner plate of labyrinthine form. I’m sure there is a deity for winter (generally, Persephone, though I’m thinking there’s one for winter only), and have I not built a small, strange contemporary altar to her. A narrow receiver (wireless) offered up inside four plastic monoliths keeping in their stillness their own kind of sentinel watching. Is this supplication? I want my friend to be well. I want her husband to enjoy retirement and her daughter have success at school. I want the cold to move on, over there, though for a Midwest winter season, I guess what is endured is rather normal. (Still too cold.) My temps in southern Pennsylvania still have two digits. But we are called to be ourselves storm-ready against a coming, miles-wide soon-arriving gale. It smacks the South and later rounds out to sea—on the way releasing slivering ice and snow and the season’s other dangers onto our regional metropoles: D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. And in my small town? I pray for navigable roads. In my small place, I pray for electricity’s constancy—that it might faithfully provide sufficient heat in rapport with the thermostat. And now I guess I wait. We wait. I clear the stove and leave on the burner now a single cup, ready for coffee. The empty ceramic vessel a suburban symbol of encouragement and also, I think, of supplication.