Psalm of Home Redux

Psalm of Home Redux

The poem "Psalm of Home Redux" is posted below for your random poem reading pleasure, but before scrolling down, let me give you a warning: you will like it, eventually.

The poem is enjoyable because of David Lee's composition. Broken into three, six-line stanzas, it develops three imperatives that are heightened by aggressive lines like "and race the moon like wild horses / to their death in the darkness" that push the reader toward the stanza's end. Of course, moons and horses aren't necessarily new poetic material (no Stephen Hawking), but when I read those two lines they do not feel cliché. Maybe because of the "death in the darkness?" This was something that bothered me at first, but now that I've looked at the poem a few times, I want to share it:

Psalm of Home Redux

after rereading Cormac McCarthy and taking
a 5 mile run through the River Ranch


Laughter is also a form of prayer

—Kierkegaard

Okay then, right here,
Lord, in Bandera,
tether me to my shadow
like a fat spavined mule
stuck sideways in Texas tank mud
bawling for eternity

At midnight's closing whine
of the 11th Street Bar's steel guitar,
when the stars slip their traces
and race the moon like wild horses
to their death in the darkness,
let my hoarse song twine with the night wind

May the bray of today's good laughter
fall like a brittle top branch
wind nudged from a sprawling live oak
straight down like early spring sleet
to the hill country's bent
and trembling bluebonnet covered knees

- David Lee

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