I Read Psalm 30 Poem by Michael Shepherd

Say, it’s the first day
of your holiday in the country or the wild:

you’ve slept so well, you go out
just as dawn is about to break,
to take in your surrounding:
fields, woods, forests, mountains;

there’s dew on the ground, moist air
gently rolling off the mountains;

everything seems, at this precious moment,
to know all about two great events:
sleeping and resting, and waking and being alive;

you take it all in for a moment;
then maybe, light a cigarette,
think of your first cup of coffee,
congratulate yourself for living the good life..

or maybe something in you would like,
as the first slow sunlight makes rainbows
in each dropp of dew in front of you,
to say thank you to someone or something;

maybe you believe a bit in God
while freely admitting, you don’t understand
anything about His – or Her, or Its – nature;

and maybe that sense of wonder
that crept up on you
slips into a sort of thankful praise; and that
expands the wonder wonderfully, until

you’re living surrounded by wonder;

and if someone said to you standing there,
don’t you feel that all around us,
we are looking, smelling, tasting, hearing,
in the silence and the stillness, something of
the nature of God? you might
say, something like that…

maybe the psalmist is right,
God ‘needs’, too, in a way;
needs human beings to wonder at him,
thank him, praise him, celebrate him…

maybe the mind loves innocence,
the heart, to sing and dance…