Psalm Unknown: Last Night I Did Not Go Walking

Last Night, I Did Not Go Walking

Last night, I did not
go walking,

but sat, quietly,
on a curb.

Two calls, in two days,
had made clear

insufficiencies,
on my part.

Worrying, now, my
fingers found

loose threads at my sleeve.
More edges

unraveling.  Some
thing to catch

I am sure.  Alone,
I spoke soft,

but did not find words
to finish.

* * *

Later, inside, I
wrote a bit.

I did not write words
of value.

What is there to say?
I am not

a sewer of clothes.
I have no

talent with needles,
nor fingers

hardened by effort
and calloused.

"And yet," one might say,
"your coat sleeves

need mending.  They will
not be sewn

themselves."  I know this
is some truth.

* * *

I think, on some nights,
of a man:

hands full of small seeds,
and walking

between furrows of
rich, soft dirt.

With authority,
he scatters,

but never looks where
his seeds go.

"There are so many,"
he must think--

"What are a lost few,
here and there?"

* * *

I am no sower
of small seeds.

I have no talent,
or green thumb.

But at the end of
my sleeves, threads

are coming undone.
Who else sees

what the crows will take
but--now--me?

Last night, I did not
go walking.

I sat on a curb,
to think or

pray.  Then my fingers
found edges,

coming unraveled--
or unsewn.


KMC 4/7/14

Psalm 51:On Drost's Batsheba met de brief van koning David

On Drost's Batsheba met de brief van koning David

The sound
of fire
in the brazier
wakes me,
and I know,
now,
what I have long
heard:
flames lick,
sputter,
consume,
and leave
not ash,
but
something
spent,
and old.

I have seen him,
tonight,
and I'm sorry;
running,
in your charges,
as I
have imagined them:
before bronze
and wood
penetrating
deeply,
and drawing
red, and
precious,
blood.

What kind
price
was this?
Paid
in blood-guiltiness:
yours, first;
and also
mine.

You age me,
king.
The lines
are appearing,
in the corners
of my eyes,
and my mouth;
between
the stretched skin
of my jaw,
and shoulder:
battlements,
overlooking,
a no man's
land.
I will not remain
as new.

And what price
then?

You age me,
king.
Your eyes
wander,
and are weighed.
Your lust
for me
burns,
and consumes,
and I
am not
ash--
but sold.

KMC 1/15/14

Psalm 51: Miserere

Miserere

It is my bouyancy, this quiet evil:
drawing me upwards, in this sea, this rest.
Resisting (as if it could not) the pull
of each of my hands, strained in deeping water.
Measures earned are measures surrendered.
The hard-beating of my muscles is fought
by air I hold in my own lungs, tendered
as a miser holds his coin: clutched, stored, caught.
My sin is ever before me, felt and
known by the shape of it, its sharp edges
pressing out, thinning skin, to rip, to tear.
My sin is ever before me: these hands
red from swimming, this face a grim rictus
breaking surface tension, gasping for air.

KMC 1/8/14