This is not a movie. It is Tuesday.
We are all sixteen years old and looking
for a truth to try on like a boxer’s robe.
(What is summer camp good for, if not this?)
Jorge’s truth is pure silk—“Hermanos,
nature compels our defense of high ground”—
and we believe everything he says,
beginning, that night, with his eyes and grin.
His enemies are crushed, they collapse.
Psalm 10:10
The Wicked Man
Opening King David, the reader may
resist initially the heavy ink
against “the wicked man,” dismiss the pitch
as rhetorically transparent, the cant
of every royal house, their fear showing.
This reader may also own a horse farm,
manage a hedge fund. Other readers—
think poor and disenfranchised, the wards
of insolvent nation-states—are without
hope in this heavy world, except one: God
will break the arms of all who hold themselves
beyond account. The wicked man
is no mere figure of speech.
Ask the miserable.
When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Psalm 11:3
Snapshot
Psalm Eleven, here’s the picture: of a god
who hates all purveyors of violence
and answers their mere bows and arrows with
an apocalyptic maelstrom. What I see:
a comedy—no laughing matter—where
the villains receive what they’ve intended
for their victims, who then inherit all
the thugs had planned for themselves. Think Esther.
But who gives a damn for any of this
or cares what it may mean? See there, outside
the window, the faithfulness of daybreak
slanting orange through a scrim of new snow.
We own our lips—who is our master?
Psalm 12:4
Reasons I Write
Those who assume they have no one
to whom they must account for their words—
like politicians, bankers, older brothers,
theologians, poets, headmasters—
they are wrong. Every knee will bow, every
tongue confess. So I do not use words
like “shit” or “Sovereign Lord” unaware.
Berryman, after Hopkins, wrote truly:
that line about Christ being the only
just critic. I write because it takes little
to spark my rage, and Saint Paul said we must
toil with our hands for the end of anger
is murder, and if any would be saved,
they must, with fear and trembling, work it out.
I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.
Psalm 13:6
Among Luminous Things
In this ocean of ordinary light,
we are reef dwellers. Whether brain coral
or parrot fish or moray, we all do
our bit, then die. The ocean teems entire,
a whole we believe by faith, wrestling
with the darkness and sorrow in our hearts.
I will never regard as wise the fool
who would have me slap a muzzle on
the voice within, small and still, inspiring
praise of whoever it may be who holds
all this in brilliant fullness. I say
let fly with adoration, thanks, and more,
for if this is not the deeper reason
we are here, then there is no reason.
God is present.
Psalm 14:5
Shortsighted
for Bill, believer and photographer
You shoot the glorious—a crimson leaf
clinging to a bare branch, a snow-gray sky—
yet hanker for glory, that pure essence
of the uncreated Father of lights.
Though not one to say there is no God,
I am stuck on the quip about the bird
in hand being better than any two
that may be futzing about in the bush.
No doubt heaven’s great, but this here’s amazing.
Go ahead, call me shortsighted. It’s true:
I’m happy camping in light’s gallery
and praising the hard, full-spectrum effects
of here—now—ahead of me, a red fox
on the pond trail taking her own sweet time.
Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Psalm 15:1
Eucharist
Never have I felt a natural draw
to work anywhere close to an altar,
though, with this loose pile of sticks laid neatly
on a bare patch of earth, the ambition
to live quietly, minding my business,
becomes oblation, an ordinary
work of hands in service to grace. No priest
required, no victim, knife, or temple tax.
To this ground may a sweet, heavenly fire
descend. Here, where air sickens with the stench
of war and the perfunctory smoke
of religious ceremony, I turn—
keep us safe, O Lord our God—
to collect windfall for the coming night.
The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods.
Psalm 16:4
Rush Hour
I saw troops patrolling Grand Central,
teams of police boarding trains to
and from the universe. In the name of
Code Orange we station gun-bearers
wherever, whenever we feel exposed.
On