Last night, there was a lightning storm, plus some nearby wildfires, so it is fitting I chose “Psalm 97” as today’s poem. This poem poetically re-processes the original psalm, which presents God as Justice and King.
”Psalm 97” is part of my new collection, Voiceless Choirs: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, which I released last week.
Psalm 97
As thunder beats on the bass drum skin of the sky,
phosphorus flashes through a jagged tear in night’s veil,
making flames flail from the grass in ecstatic dance.
Fields and pines quiver in the firelight.
The world flickers between light and shadow
as drizzle hisses into the flames.
Hills wax pale in the strobing storm
then vanish as the light trembles and blacks out.
For an hour or more,
everything rumbles like a slow-rolling bowling ball
knocking statue heads together
as it tumbles through the Pantheon.
Eventually, the storm moves farther off,
and the rain stops.
Dawn is a slow storm surge of light
that swells until the scattered lightning is washed out,
and the sun is crowned in searing silence
above the charred, smoking earth.
A Wandering Minstrel 