I came to the garden to listen and wait,

To walk in the way, to leave my mistakes.

The word growled in me day and night.

I writhed and raged. I moaned, 

And meditated, and suffered.

I prayed the seed’s prayer at night, alone,

And something grew in me.

The word made root room.

It branched in me and doubled.

Dead branches sheared clean.

Green growth forked 

And fruited, plush as peaches—

Costless, changeless, brimming.

The water finally ran clear 

And free everywhere I looked.

The wicked aren’t like this.

The years they hoped to harvest

Dry and chaff all away. 

They crisp and go dead.

Then the wind takes them.

But I will layer ring on ring

As God’s years mark loops in me.

I’ll listen for the whisper of psalms, 

And begin what there is to begin.

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To let any of this happen.

Why did you allow that dog grief

To bound me down and 

Stripe my body ragged?

Why did you give me these ghost days

That I wish had never happened?

All day a fear runs 

Like a song through my head.

Is says: Faith is a fool’s game;

Faith is razor-bladed.

If you are my refuge, 

Why do I go about mourning?

If you are my safety,

Why am I always in flight?

Now, unwind your welcome. Cast it out!

Send your word out like prowling cats that

Hunt the wide world home again. 

Beacon me back to your high hill 

And speak a name I nearly recognize.

It wasn’t away from my wreck 

That I found you, but in the middle of it.

There you were, the one 

I had longed for and laughed at. 

I was hounded and  hackled, and racked

But you were ready.

I laid as much life as I had left

On your altar and hoped the smoke

Would pass for prayer.

O my soul, why would you come this far

To fall now? Hold your hope aloft.

None of this is what it seems.

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Lord, do not remember the sins of my youth.
Forget the years I mistook my fears for virtues.
Forget my empty renunciations.
Remember me through your lasting love.
Imagine me through your mercy.

I stood a season-long watch
In the draughty chapel, listening
For your voice between breaths of bellsong.
I went wrong at long turns and saw it too late.
Will you ravel me back and piece me together?
Or is the friendship of the Lord
Nearness as I come apart?
Show me what there is to know
In the way I need to know it.
There is always more 
Of your kindness than I thought was left.
 
I have longed for peace
But never learned it.
My days are harried, scraped bare,
Blurred from bed to bed,
And chased with a short, beaten sleep. 
Turn to me and be gracious.
I found a trouble larger than I am.
I can stretch my hands and touch
Both walls of my hope,
So small a cell it is. 
Inside, I worry at the promises of the Almighty 
As a dog worries a bone.
Show me the way of peace
And I will walk it. 
Hold my careworn, threadbare 
heart completely still.
Guard me. Deliver me.
Show me the snowdrops 
Crowded in the dooryard
When winter comes. 

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Music: "Nightfall Hymn" by Yehezkel Raz

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Of the Lord than I thought I could,

Or would, or should, but waiting

Inside the waiting,

I was answered.

I gave myself up for lost.

My head slipped below the water

And my life listed to unsaid silence.

My days were cracked, kettled consonants

Succeeded by rhymeless nights.

Before my feet found any purchase,

But after my strength gave out,

He caught me. He reeled out

Rescue and set me firm again.

My mouth had run out

Of ways to say help,

To say come, to say now, Lord!

I didn’t get what I wanted. Instead,

I got beams of rosegold

On leaves bright as pennies;

The martins circling year and again;

The clear air at the storm tail of summer;

The starless, sunless sky;

Water barely dimpled for ghost feet;

The slow consolation of self-forgetting.

It was all more song than I could say or sing,

So I listened longer and

Said thank you.

I trusted to the trust,

And graced myself to the grace. God,

You fractaled out in split beams.

You flung your wonder

Work wide across the sky.

Your welling mind fountained full

Of thoughts of me.

You never wanted me to barter

A better deal with you,

Though I tired myself with trying.

You wanted me to wait until

The quiet filled me all the way up.

So here I am. My hands are empty.

My plans are gone.

Pierce me straight through,

And scrawl your lines on

The paper walls of my living heart.

The whole story brims over

And runs out of me.

I can’t hold it back. I was lost

But I did not stay lost.

I slipped into the blank dark,

But light broke loose and

Took my whole life with it.

Now, when I hear my name, I listen.

Now, I know the waiting is the rescue.

Now, when I open my mouth

A whole river runs out.

For a long time, I was afraid

You would only portion out

Your kindness to me,

Peddling it in misered,

Stinted bits like meager pennies.

After all, haven’t I had whole years

Sundered shear? Hasn’t the dark sated itself

On my failures like they were honey

And my life was only winter bees?

Did you mark each thing I lost to the water?

I can’t remember their names,

Only see the narrowing space between the loves

In my heart they used to hold open.

But when your grace rose and ran

It was sunrise; it was floodtide. I was shaken,

Pressed down, pierced, and running over.

I was spooling out in the wind and lifted.

I was snatched away and safe again.

The prayers I even forgot all rang yes in a snap.

You see what is arrayed against me.

You have counted my long odds and numbered

The ones who delight to do me wrong.

Appall them. Hurl them back.

Do them harm. Shame them to stillness,

Rend their hearts hard in half.

But come find me just in time,

Along with everyone who ever ran to you

As their first turn or last resort.

Then, I’ll welcome in the welcome

Then, I’ll rest in the rest.

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Every night, the sidelong hip of the Milky Way

Shows itself to you. You see

Backward across miles and years

Along the light of the works of the Almighty.

The earth at your feet is fruitful, wild, and weary.

It pours out words day and night.

The sky and the screaming birds

And all the fullness therein say:

Holy, holy, holy.

The circuit of the sun spans the sky.

If you would have light and heat,

Why are you not more in the sunshine?

If you would see the glory of God,

Why are you always elsewhere?

If you would hear the word in the wind,

Face the stars and wait.

Lord, your word wends your people perfectly;

I wander a lifelong in it.

Wrap it around my heart to heal.

Speak the long law down directly

And make me wise.

Curve the straight line of your commandments

Over me and make me glad again.

Put the honeycomb of your way

In my mind’s mouth.

Even now my chest, my ribs, these rafters,

This cathedral, fills with the word that made it,

And your name hushes through the clerestory.

It was always easier to give my life away

Than it was to lay it down.

I see my every fault in holy light;

My hidden thoughts are pearl bright.

But your love is longer than I thought, and stays

Like smoke by day and fire by night.

The stars sway in your holy heaven.

The sun walks its lightlong stretch of sky.

I watch and wait and listen.

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I open my mouth and find your praise in it.

My life is your boast.

May those who are cast off

Take comfort and consolation

When the rumor of God grows great among us.

There is no count of the needs I brought him,

Questions I cried out and answers

That blushed over me

Like a soft dawn in the high sky,

So that I hardly noticed the change

Until, suddenly, the birds

Were singing again.

I did not know light could ring,

Nor faith stretch true as a plucked string,

Nor fold and dive like a tucked wing.

He shone. The sun rose. Lord knows

My fears fled. Shame slipped

From my grip. Hope shined

Bright as brass and silver fast.

The Lord himself walked all my edges,

And nothing could hold him back.

Oh, taste him, test him—

See that he is good.

He is a shelter, a home, a hallow.

He is the feast the hungry lack,

The wine that draws them back.

If you want life and you love your days,

Come take his goodness with two hands.

Lord, you hear every slapdash, slipshod,

Half-hearted, broken prayer the righteous raise.

But those who want to bend your way awry

And devour your people like bread,

Find you flint faced and stone still.

He draws nearer to the brokenhearted than they know.

He frees those who have been crushed,

Bruised, careworn, and snuffed out.

Those who make the Lord

Their hope find him in lockstep

When they wend their way

Through their afflictions.

But the wicked find the deaths

They feared all their roiling days

In wait for them, hungry as ever.

God shelters all who come to him

As their last, lost, happy home.

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I am scraped low, slung out, 

And strung hard between bitten hours

And bent, bated minutes.

I haunt from room to room.

People pat me on the shoulder

And don’t know what to say.

How long will this last?

I’m not going to make it.

But if you love me, save me. 

Stop me. Carry me. Rattle me down 

And meet me on the long way round.

No one will remember you in the dust of death.

And don’t you want my praises?

Didn’t you want to glory inside me?

Why did you let this ruin root itself

And gnash me to bone?

If I had sails, I could ride my bed

On the water of my tears.

All my thoughts are salted white

And grief runs in me like a floodtide.

Why do fears fountain so full, but grace

Rises slowly, wears disguises,

And turns on such small hinges?

God, heave to heaven and throw me over.

Take my prayers to your chest. 

Send me peace in volleys.

Fold my troubles in on themselves

And leave me standing.

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With him, I lack nothing.

He guides me in the last way left—

Farthest round and the first home.

He walks me to the river

And settles stillness over me

Like a tree at the water’s edge.

He seeks me when I wander 

Into danger and don’t come home.

He leads me along the good paths

For his name’s sake.

Even when I wander at the violet hour;

When wolf fears steal in to take 

A share and howl in the hills;

When the count of days only climbs

And nothing goes right;

When I meet the shadow falling

Between the way I wanted

And the way I went—

I will fear no evil.

You are with me.

Your rod and staff are my comfort,

My shepherd and chevalier.

I wanted to be swept off,

Taken somewhere safe, 

But you met me here 

And set a table down in the middle 

Of the people I learned 

To love to hate.

You striped my brow with oil.

The cup of my lifted hands

Is fuller than I could hope to hold.

None of it is what I wanted,

But you shepherd me still.

Surely, goodness and mercy,

With rest and trust and consolation,

Will hallow round me, 

Will find and bind me,

All the days of my life.

And I will live where you live forever.

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Who can find their home 

On your holy mountain?

The one whose walk and work are blameless,

Whose rest sings the seventh sunrise,

Whose days bloom goodness,

And whose heart is kernel crushed,

Chaff blown, and light

As deep heaven’s snowflake bread.

Their tongues do no violence;

Nor do they hoard hate 

To cast out in wide arcs

Like seed on whomever is around.

They judge without blame.

They suffer love with great hearts 

And are glad of it.

They give themselves away

But can’t be bought.

They promise more

Than there is to give.

They give more

Than it takes to live.

They lose and love

More than they thought they could.

It was good.

It was good.

It was good.

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I would have traded anything

For a glimpse of you.

Slow syllables that never resolve to words

Growl out of me, but no one hears.

At night, need holds my eyes open,

But no answer comes.

There is no peace in the silence, 

Only disquiet.

Yet, you are here; 

Higher, holy, throned none the less.

Since the day you gathered your people,

They have trusted you. Like children,

They cried and you came, 

Quick and fey; bright as day.

You held nothing back.

You gave them no lack.

But I am a worm—

Hardly a child of yours.

I shock everyone who sees me.

They hide their mouths behind their hands,

But I can feel their words cut.

They can’t help but laugh

As if they have never seen 

Someone who has hoped in God

And still been left. They watch 

For rescue that doesn’t come.

They say, “He’s lost. He’s hung there. 

Let the Lord snatch him up.”

You have been my God 

From the ordinary altar 

Of my mother’s womb, 

So why this ridicule?

It is more than I can stand.

Be near. Help me. Trouble gathers. 

I may have only one last trust left in me. 

Fear rushes at me like bulls

That won’t be balked or backed down.

My heart’s wax all melts.

I am cross bound and heaving.

My body is broke and my friends have fled.

I wear the shock, the stun,

The dust of the dead.

Any fool could count my bones

When they come to gloat and gape

At what faith bought me.

They see me sorted and sifted, nailed here, 

Hammered between bone and bone.

They dicker over my possessions.

I am split and rattled like dice in a cup.

All night, I writhe to the cock’s crow,

While deep heaven’s snowflake bread

Flickers and falls everywhere for the taking.

But, Lord, there was never a moment

When you were somewhere else.

Lift my limp body down 

And plant it somewhere safe.

I will grow greater in the dark. 

Make me a banner for my bones risen.

Gather my griefs and paint them 

In wide arcs on a blood canvas.

I didn’t know what any of it meant,

But my faith was still a hallowed hammer 

And your love a hanging tree.

God, when you tapped the world, it rattled.

When you spoke, everything hushed

And bent to hear. When you breathed, 

Every blooming thing burst to life.

When you broke a trumpet blast at last, 

The dead all stood and shook themselves

And rose, blinking at the light.

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They are snapping teeth, an endless, 

Unkillable, unloveable, unlistening night.

I stumble and they laugh.

I tuck tail and tremble.

They pounce and play.

They take what they will with indelicate bites.

They lay wagers on whether God will share 

Any of his dwindling stock of saving, 

Or if I have spent my last stack of chances.

Is this poetry prayer enough?

Will I find you a shield? 

Will I find softness when I bring

My heap of errors before you,

Or the hard blade of your hand, 

Honed for cutting?

But be glory in me. Be loved.

Be great somehow. 

Get sorrow stopped.

My opposition mounts,

But matters less and less.

Fall on every trouble that dogs me

Like a falcon tipped from holy heights. 

Be thunder and smoke. Be storm bright.

Give us the shelter of your strange light.

The danger drew close around me, 

But I was still safe. I slept. 

I woke. I remained. I remembered.

Now no numberless, nameless, 

Ravening fears can make me flinch.

Now my shelter is all around me.

It goes where I go.

God’s salvation is breaking light.

It is an encircling safety inside the rising water, 

A sunder of the storm sea, 

And we all walk through on dry land.

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And I will ask again: hear me.

This prayer is all I can manage,

But it rises from an honest heart.

Winnow me and claim what remains.

I am a fulgurite among a million sands.

Sift me and start again with what is left.

Seek me and sound me out.

Stand at my side as I groan 

Through my night thoughts one by one.

I have kept my hands from violence.

I have watched for signs—

A bent branch, a footstep,

A whisper leading left or right,

The next river rock between flashes of light—

To trace your path where it bends away.

I have raised my voice in hope you’ll hear,

In hope you’re real. Now listen to my prayer.

Show me you are better 

Than my frail hopes guessed.

Show me you know how to shelter

Those who have wagered with you,

For doubts and dice rattle here in my head.

If I ever needed refuge, it is now.

I am not well-versed in violence,

But my enemies are all at hand.

They have shut their dull hearts

And sharpened their mouths. 

They do not know your name,

But they do know mine.

Before me, faces leer and lunge,

Pallid as bones, snapping, angry.

Behind me, claws skitter, blood bright.

Between them, I gasp through ever longer nights.

Violence is not what you made the world for—

It is just what happens here.

Is my God greater

Than these thousand threats?

Rise and round them back. Show them

Your love is silver over steel.

Teach them the name of the power 

That guards the weak.

No strength stands unbended before you. 

Bow them. Upend them. 

They have taken the fattest portion.

Their bellies bulge.

Their cupped hands hoard spoils 

They have promised to themselves. 

As for me, 

I wake through harrowing nights,

But you have heard me.

You have never been closer than this.

My consolation waits

In the lines of your face.

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Your strange steps blacken

A path backward along my trail.

But you are still my cleft, my crag, my solace.

You have been my promontory, 

My high hideaway, my safe, close space.

I am no stranger to need.

I know death rises like a rogue wave

From a cloudless sky and glass-smooth sea.

There were years when the grave 

And I were well acquainted.

I called death by its first name

And it whispered mine back.

None would have marked it,

Had I slipped soundlessly into the wild water.

My prayers were all gasping.

Though I was sure they were my last breath,

And I only half believed what I half understood,

I lifted them to you 

Like a hand upraised from the water,

And felt something catch.

Then the firemount woke,

And none of us kept our feet.

The earth hurled us end over end;

Threw out vaulted fireseed 

That did not bloom or blossom, 

But burned like anger burns.

We didn’t know fire could splash

Nor love lash lava lines—red on black,

Nor God buck in smoke pillars

With wide pinions on darkling sky.

We prayed for him to ride a reckoning down

On everything that needed more than time,

But when it came we hid our eyes

And begged him to stop. 

He terrified us. 

The rumor of his wrath ran every direction.

The heavens staggered and fell, 

Breaking coal bright in fractal lace lightning.

His wings were the worldwinds.

He drew the dark down around us.

The skylines all bent and bowed

And fire burst from cloud to cloud. 

There were burnt words in the thunder

But I didn’t want to hear them.

Everyone scattered.

Every naked thought

Crisped in the lightning light.

Even the sea drew back

To show its hollow bones

And the drowned days it took from me.

I regretted my pleas for help.

I wished he hadn’t come, 

Yet the strange light flashed around

And snatched me up and I was saved.

I never thought he would move so fast

Or be so much larger than me.

He put himself between me

And every danger.

He held me hard through the wrack

Of fears that tumbled off me.

He brought me to an open place.

The darkness and terror smoke

Were gone, and light lay around me.

I was safe.

Lord, how can you be so gentle

And so pyroclastic; 

The refuge and the razor wind?

What have I done to be spared?

I followed your way but also lost it. 

Yet your mercy arcs above me all the same.

To the blameless, you are blameless.

To the pure, you are pure.

To those who trade every other advantage

To follow you, you are a fortress,

A shield, a tower, a burning sword.

To those who have reached 

The end of themselves, you are a sere 

Moraine rockland, strewn with rubble and wisdom.

To those who beat their breast and hardly dare

Raise their tear-bright faces, you are a father, 

A mother, their long, last love.

To we glad-hearted fools who make

Huge gestures of hope toward a world

That promises us nothing, 

You are our rest, our reward, our consolation.

What rock is there but you?

Your nimble love makes my heavy heart as fleet as deer.

Your strength saw me through my long odds

Every time I cast my lot with you.

You trained my hands in the long surrender.

But it was your gentleness 

That made me great. 

The rumor of what you’ve done in me

Went out in circles like a struck bell.

People I did not know heard of you.

My enemies lost heart and their folly

Suddenly seemed as petty as it ever was.

God remains my stormrock, my tower.

His name is upheaval. He topples

The highest to the lowest place,

While the lowly stand up proud as any king.

When his long-suffered, long-prayed justice comes, 

Only the humble can raise their heads.

For this, we praise you, Lord. 

What else is left to us

When the hard harrow of your love has passed?

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My summer palaces; the violence

I mistook for virtue; the days

I was always elsewhere; the years

I flung down the fidelities

I should have followed home.

If your love is as true as you say,

Forget the rest.

My failures are always with me.

They are more than I can stand.

I buried them in the garden,

But they only bloomed black roses

That everyone could see.

Grief pools wherever I sit.

It has been years since

I saw a mirror I recognized.

But you, God, are blameless.

You are never wrong. You never miss.

Your justice hits home.

I can’t stand it.

I go wrong seven times a day.

I don’t want to live on the lam,

But fugitive days unroll

Under my feet nonetheless.

If you are hiding some remedy,

Share it out. If you know the truth,

And have any patience left,

Show me what it looks like

When love takes flesh

And tarries with us.

Wash me and I

Will be whiter than snow.

I’ll be free. I’ll sing. I’ll bring

All the bones you’ve broken

Back to you to set in place, in peace.

Overthrow my dense, knotted

Conundrum of folly.

Collect each empty renunciation

And count it good.

Don’t leave me to the years I lost.

Hold me by the hand

And walk me somewhere else.

Then, my old loves will return,

Like birds to eat from my hands:

My gentleness, my quiet, the stillness

I spent so long running from.

Then, you’ll dance me down to bones

And raise me back again.

I won’t have to beat my failures, 

Only see them for what they are.

Repentance will run like quicksilver

Over everything I touch.

I tried to bargain with you

But what you wanted was a broken heart,

So I laid my whole self on the altar

Like it was my bed,

And didn’t think of rising

With my lies intact.

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Of prayer and ask for help.

My fate went freewheel and fell. 

I fled this far on the lam.

Now hide me in the high place.

Hold me. Hush me. Take me in.

Trouble is singing down around me.

There is no end of it.

So lock me in a love that won't be breached.

Take my hunted heart in your hands.

Grab my soul by the bones,

And run.

On good days, I feel you under,

Around, and inside my afflictions.

Your heaven-heighted love

Draws down around me,

Speaks my name, settles me to stillness.

And I know that I’m known,

Carried, collected, and kept.

But this is not one of the good days.

My loves lost me all I wanted;

First a little bit, then a lot, then

Everything else all at once.

My clever plans didn’t pay out.

I hoped my way through happy lies

That didn’t keep me safe.

Now, I writhe. I waste. I am washed

In the amber grief light.

My memories honed bright edges

And I keep cutting myself

On the things that used to matter.

I am the black willow the fire left,

Curled and ash mad

And sloughing off embers.

Death has already set to work in me.

My garden is here. My friends are fled.

I’m gasping on my bedroom floor.

No one wants to see

The wrack wash over me.

My eyes won’t hold open,

As if I was not a living man,

but already one of the forgotten dead.

Sorrow has become my work and words,

So I stay inside and wait the shakes,

While panic sprouts wild around me.

But still

My love for you is unbroken.

I trust you. You are still mine.

Come as close as you can and closer.

I need walls, solid ground, handles,

Labels for things, a fortress,

Feathers, a father.

So wing around me, God.

Everyone knows I have hoped in you

And suffered anyway.

My times are in your hand.

I reel blind on the grindstone, but you shine.

You sear my shame with your

Whitefire, cauterizing love.

So, I seal my lips

And let it be enough.

Sway a wonder work among us.

Billow your goodness up

For your scattered sons.

Hide us, heal us, hold us

In your shelter from the strife of tongues.

I sought you as siege engines

Rattled against me and lobbed

Dead doubts I thought I’d left behind.

I panicked. I cried. I pleaded

And you rushed past the noise

And whispered how it is,

And was, and will be.

You dealt me double for all my fears.

You paid back the lost years.

You kept me hid as the wracking din

Rose and fell to ground again.

You are my guard and gift.

Tip the backward world rightside round.

Come be kinder than I thought you could.

Summon your steadfast love.

Send it in waves, in a flood,

In a long, unrolling tide.

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Can hardly imagine the Lord keeps 

No count against me.

I was bent double over 

My riddle days, wracked and walking 

The years of my life backward.

Lives I thought I’d lost honeycombed

And hunched down like winter bees 

Eating my heart’s honey.

I shuddered long, stuttering prayers

That never gathered to a point,

And left me still as full of secrets

As a wet bag of blood.

Your burning palm pressed me down.

I sizzled and blackened. 

My strength bubbled and boiled away.

I held myself together

And waited to be overthrown.

When I sickened enough on silence,

My story broke out of me. I confessed. 

I did not know there was so much to say.

I stacked secrets I could hardly name

In neat rows under the open face

Of God’s high heaven. I told the whole thing.

I told the break of it, the dogged, gagged guilt;

The wail of it; the haggard, sweet grit of it.

It raised me on a wild, terrifying tide

Of words without lies.

And I was lifted, forgiven, concealed,

Consoled, held, ushered in. My God!

Will every broken trust be mended?

Everyone who wants to find God, come.

Everyone who wants the plain peace

Of the holy world in their hands again, come.

Everyone who wants to sit in silence

Inside the walls of their old fidelities,

Come and buy joy back again. 

God is a high hiding place in a flood.

His love won’t quit,

And he hasn’t met his match yet.

So watch me. Learn from me. 

Listen where the honey is; 

To buzzing bruises that have been singing

So low, so long you hardly hear them. 

Sorrow is a sly teacher with long, 

Loud lessons that don’t stop

Once its angry engines fire alive. 

But if you go the whole way, even love 

Will loop around and hem you in

If you let it.

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Like you were the last hiding place left

While the rumbling world clattered down.

You are my God, what other home 

Do I have but where you are?

What other family have I but yours?

Those who sell themselves 

To other gods will find that sorrow 

Billows all around them,

Steals in through the cracks,

And settles in quiet corners.

The Lord is my portion, my lot,

The cup I drink to the dregs.

The lines of my life lead here.

It is enough. I am content.

You teach me the way of life

By walking it with me.

You are always at hand, always before me,

So even when I slip, I won’t fall,

And even when I fall, I rise.

My old loves all return 

Like birds to eat from my hands:

My gentleness, my quiet, the stillness

I spent so long running from, 

Settle around me in circles.

You save me from every pitfall.

You walk me in the path of life.

I didn’t know joy could run this full.

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Where is your river I wanted?

My soul’s throat drinks 

Salt tears and clicks shut.

What is the count of days until

I stand before you in the flesh? 

Everyone laughs at the holes in my needs 

Where my God should be.

But I remember when I walked 

With the throng to your house.

We kept faith, kept festival.

We made our songs sails 

And your invisible wind 

Filled them for all to see.

I say to my soul, sing! Lift aloft.

None of this is what it seems.

But the words don’t work.

At night, there is the silence

And the long longing. My God,

My abysses all meet and merge. 

I wanted water, but you were flood.

Your breakers swept stormwise 

And I was overthrown.

But even the deep is yours.

Your love still rushes out

On the lines you gave it. 

I know the song is real

Because I can even hear it here.

In the dark, there is not much 

Space dividing faith and need, 

So I slip my prayers in the cracks 

Between the times you never showed up,

And the times you lifted me,

And set me home with you 

Where the flood never touched.

Why should I mourn 

If my adversaries are unconvinced

By a God who would let this happen?

Many things need more than time. 

So, sing. Stand again.

Brace yourself. Hope in God. 

Pant and praise and wait.

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My enemies. They are right here,

Sitting at my right and left,

Snapping with dull teeth, shaking me down,

Faces all pallid as bone;

Hotscrabble, grasping, devious as hell.

They kick a shallow hole and lay me down in it.

They have told me lies, but I can’t tell which ones.

Lord, contend with them.

I never thought I’d need the hew 

And hem of battle, but here I am.

Bind your buckler on your arm.

Lay about me left and right—

Shield, sword, and holy spear.

Prove you are my salvation.

Run your fleet fork through them.

Send your winnow wind to whip 

The chaff away. Billow and break 

Their limelight laughter at my expense. 

Hunt them. Hound them. 

Rattle them down.

Tip them into their own pits.

Toss them into the teeth of their own plans.

They hunted me for nothing.

My innocence only drew them on.

Lord, when will it be enough?

When they were afflicted, I stood in their stead 

In the mouth of the thresher.

I wore sackcloth and prayed.

They slipped, and I was shaken.

I gave freely what they would have taken.

I lost ground. I tumbled down.

I fasted for nights. I didn’t sleep.

I carved their names into every moment of my day

And clutched their affliction close to my heart.

But the moment I slipped, 

I saw the gleam of teeth in all their wild words. 

Everyone laughed and blamed me. 

They marked the day my strength failed

So that it would not be forgotten.

They kept it like a holy day,

Gathering each year to drink

To the time my hope ran out.

How long will this go on?

When will you come to the final number

Of the long count of days

We have waited for justice?

I only wanted rest.

I only wanted the quiet to settle 

Down around me in circles.

But now people I never met use my name

To pick the meat from their teeth.

They wink at each other and spit gristle

And crack my soul’s bones.

They chew my secrets and say, 

“We swallowed him up

And it was delicious.”

I know you are not sleeping, God.

You are not absent or busy.

You see all of this, so why keep silent? 

Your prophets have always been

Too paltry to stand up for themselves.

Give me back the years I lost.

Pry open grief’s grasping hands.

Pass my enemies back a double portion

For each brittle, bated night I half went mad.

Lord, you let your people suffer,

But you do not let us lose. 

Enough. Draw this to a close.

Make happiness and peace return to me

Like birds to eat from my hands.

Set down at last the long last line:

“The Lord saves the humble because goodness is ever his delight.”

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