Declaration (For Jim Stewart)

(after Psalm 19)

I miss the symmetry – the call, response –
implied in ‘day to day’ and ‘night to night’;
I miss that the days gleam, gossipy with news,
that their gushing is also the springing of light,
the gloss of the blossom that drips into honey.

I wish our word for ‘gleam’ was also close to ‘tithe’
and ‘to be hollow’, I love the joke
that merges it with ‘bark’ as would a prophet, whilst
I’m a servant, a lowly bee, who works
to fashion nectar for those little cleaned-out cups.

I miss that the nights lie low and whisper,
splendour is not a word they’d use.
Why mention stars, when the knowledge night
already has enjoys them? I miss the lullaby
of laylah speaking to the lip of heart.

In the original, just beneath the script,
isn’t the great abundance scooped from emptiness,
at the heel of the hunt, after wastelands
patrolled by behemoth – the turn – compensation
seeded in the consonants of paying heed?

Have we lost the line of the days and the nights
that extends to the very ends of the earth,
and the thought that it is composed of the words
that make the sun spring from his bridal tent?
What made me think that the sun was a racehorse?

Didn’t we start – the heavens are recounting
and the firmament is weighing out the Glory?
I’d like to dedicate my meditation to the Chief Musician –
who’d miss that, instead of adding, should he be listening,
I’d declare – my rock and my redeemer?

© Dawn Wood