Psalming

In ancient times a psalm was any song sung to the strings of a harp. If we listen, a certain music can be heard, a rhythm, a pulse to defeat the noise out of which we can create a psalm of our own.

The keyboard is my harp. Lyrics are what I write describing my engagement with life as I take it in; the injustice, carnage and mindlessness alongside love, mercy and creative bursts. I straddle two worlds… above the fray, distant and cocooned in green pastures, while preparing a table at the barricades in the presence of my enemies.

What if God, the Lord, is not a noun but a verb as in lording over one’s garden, one’s self. We are our own shepherds. Do we seek still waters? No, we seek the path beside the water, on the shore. To behold this water, this dry land, this strip, this Black Sea, this West Bank. The water is still and the air without wind to move invading sailing ships. We are wanting, left with rod and staff, at the great divide.

Let me presume that everything happening in our midst is happening inside the poet. Shall poets answer the bell heard tolling? Do they write out of their rage and despair?  Or do they breathe a more rarefied air above the valley of shadows? Is the poet the one who poles us across the water and puts music in our ears (Charles Wright.)?

The psalm I am hearing is the song of cessation from Kiev to Tel Aviv. Guns silenced. Pens to paper. Water shared. Cups running over. Grain as cargo. An adagio of diplomacy.