When we were kids...


When we were kids, Dad woke us up 

and we would read the Psalms 

before breakfast.


We did this enough for lines of King James's English,

Such as “He scattereth hoarfrost like ashes....”

to still run through my mind when frost collects on wire fence and north facing slopes,


Robert Alter's translation of Psalm 88 says—

“Why, Lord, do You abandon my life, 

do You hide Your face from me?”


Though Psalms sing of relatedness and praise

and maybe for that reason also hold 

the complicated otherness of God.


Psalm 88 ends—

“You distance lover and neighbor from me,

My friends—utter darkness.”


It was this darkness

that first renewed the Psalms

as poetry to me.



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