Psalm 126 is a joyous song about the Lord restoring Israel after a time of suffering and judgment. It portrays a people so grateful they think they must be dreaming. The thought of being joyful to point of dreaming piqued my interest, so I wrote a poem based on this psalm for my latest book, Voiceless Choirs: Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs.
Psalm 126
It’s pitch black,
and I don’t know where I am.
By and by, I realize I’m walking,
never hesitating.
I drift outside myself, surprised.
I should be worried
about tripping or running into something,
but it doesn’t even cross my mind.
In the twinkling of an eye,
I’m back in myself, and I’m in
a parched place near a signpost.
People mill about the signpost,
tearing open small packets
and dumping the contents into their own mouths
or the mouths of others.
As I approach the crowd,
a young woman empties a packet into her mouth.
Throwing back a head of long, dark chocolate hair,
she flashes a smile, raises her hands to the sky, and dances.
I touch her arm—
“What’s everyone got in their mouths?”
She drops her head, opens shining, emerald eyes,
and smiles: “It’s laughter. Try some.”
She lifts an open packet to my mouth.
Bright orange crystals tumble past my lips,
crackling, popping, and fizzing,
filling my mouth with tiny fireworks
as soon as they hit my tongue.
Mirth cloudbursts from everyone around me.
I raise my face and arms to the sun
then feel myself leave the ground in slow circles.
Spiraling into the whiteout of the clouds,
I slow to a hover and begin to fall, a raindrop
plummeting from the shrinking cloud.
I feel myself shatter-splash on the granular earth,
then I’m free-falling again from a cheek,
a tear abandoned to the air,
water-balloon-bursting on the dirt.
With me, other tears soak deep into the soil
and seed it with curling sprouts seeking sun.
Out of nowhere, my body appears,
suspended in the earth, buried.
The sprouts come from underneath
and hold me aloft.
I am a crowd-surfing hero
on hundreds of tender, green fingertips.
My body rides a slow-growth elevator
to the top floor of the underworld.
As my face breaks the surface,
crumbs of dirt tumble down my cheeks
in the open air,
and I am in my own bed,
the sun flooding through the window
with open arms.
A Wandering Minstrel 