Work Psalm

Knock, and He'll open the door...Become nothing, and He'll turn you into everything. ~ Rumi

Red dawn clouds moil like blood
and promise hawk flight over Lake Superior.
Glacial crags jut into the highway
that runs past rocky lake shore
where elevators shoot grain
into ships in the harbor.
Railroad cars on the bridge
roll on tracks
from the pit where dozers climb
like ants on mountains of taconite.

Call up tohu and bohu; take axe
to the dead carcass of the day
and spread its mass at
the four ends of the earth.
Still, I am there. I the zero.
Empty cipher without name.

I seek nothing in nothingness,
not a thing to take along death’s
way like magic rock, secret chant,
or the souls of those I might
enslave to my desire to be god.

My job is a rite of belief, rote
task betokening death.
Its routine is miracle enough to praise
Maker of sky, lake, woods.
Their history mine but not mine,
their breath my last breath of holy air.

I’ll raise a cross on the
mound of my rebellion against
these days given in love and call
that name beyond names,
that love beyond love that knows
what to love and who and when;
love that rewards with no regret
but brings in its wake a tide
of days renewed and futures
unknown to augury or statistic.

Creation anew, world anew,
person anew. Known unknown.

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.