After Psalm 139
You’ve taken me on.
I wake, and my rising
stands in your knowing.
You follow my going
onto my streets and over,
out into your distances.
Where will my walk,
my circle end
except in your opening eye?
Wide enough’s your Eye
for all my ways.
Be ever so strange
the word that tries my lips:
you’ll be the sayer.
You wait me all around,
ahead, behind –
where do my fingers reach
but into deeper knowing
that is yours of me?
Where could I go
that wouldn’t bring together?
Ever our face is wider, meets
opener. If I could climb your heavens,
so would you.
If I preferred your hell
you’d wait in hell.
If I took the wings of morning,
flew the ocean – when I landed
it would be into your hand.
If I called down all your darkness
all my darkness
would be light to you:
my dark you never feared.
My innards hang within me
and within your knowing;
down in my mother’s belly
you began with me.
Was fear, was wonder yours
before it settled in my soul?
You’re implicated in my very under.
Deep within your earth the faults
become with me.
Gleaming in my bones
they are my lines and characters,
your mind’s to lighten them,
to see how you shall read them.
How can I tell you what they mean
to me – your thoughts by me?
I feel them all around me, more
than sands around the sea.
And when we both awaken
they’ll be there for us.
--Lloyd Haft
