After Reading Psalm 6
After Reading Psalm 6
Richard Pierce
My bones are vexed, softened with the seed
of the pharisee’s yeast—which is hypocrisy.
Make straight my paths
and strengthen my knees and my joints.
Death is in that yeast.
Death
is in these bones.
What will bloom
when this fading flower is planted? My body and brain.
This blade of grass, this
sacred God-created husk,
which I have abused.
Amused, I sink
into my chair
of soft pleasure & forgotten despair.
And there, aware at times I am
unaware, the memory of You
slays me. No. Too strong. Menaces.
Remembering myself and what You ask
then is an acrid dust to my eyes
& I prefer—too often, too long—the sugary
sour & sweet flash
of candied smartphone apps and internet news—
even on this fast for Saints Peter and Paul,
great founders of the church.
My movement forward, when there is any
is lurch, lurch.
I hurt but run from You.
I do not love You, but
run away & amok
and find myself stuck in the screen lazy hours
and tired in the afternoon,
tho Metropolitan Bloom says it is okay
to tell You we need a break from vigilance
and St. Theophan says
one will not always want to pray
and that that is what handcraft is for.
Father Rodney said to re-direct my thoughts.
It is that simple
but I lack the desire, the fire
and do not think of that
final and frightful fire.
Your love is in that fire. Your love is
that fire unwelcomed. There is no hell,
only You
unwanted and present and unable
to be pushed away.
Do I even wish to do Your will?
Too often not and, honestly,
most of the time no and I hide in distraction.
Wisdom, Lord, abide, and please forgive
the sandstone-cold indifference and judgmental thoughts
which tumble and grind in my heart
and for not loving enough—at all at times, honestly
—even the ones I am closest to.
Your will be done.
Help me to crawl
then to walk
& to run.
There is no one to place me in the water.
Richard Pierce, Ph.D.
Poet & Professor
Richard Pierce is an associate professor of English at Waynesburg University. His poetry has been published in Image, Ninth Letter, Birmingham Poetry Review, The Windhover, and other journals. His chapbook The Book of Mankey was published by Cooper Dillon.
Photography by Jaromir Kavan