Psalm 22

 I trust you lord

For your shadow girds the earth, gives measure to the deep.

I cannot see, I cannot hear, the screaming bells cast searing heat, a corona hot and bittersweet carves temple grounds in my deceit.

A viper does not know the sky, apart from soft-edged silhouettes that crawl along the ground, reflections of penumbral actors, changing without sound.

So too are we confined to dust, our avarice a painting brush, and as we slither and mistrust, leaving naught but bones upon the ground.

The teeth of hounds grapple with my spirit, rending silver-tinted melodies across the black expanse. Towers claw towards the heavens like fingers on the deserts hand, from windows high and balconies grand, the song of my tribulations echo in palaces of sand.

“May God bless you. May he whisk you from this fate! Like a Zephyr blows a field of wheat, your God is like a quaff of wine that dries the tongue in desert heat” The lords of towers tall and white arrogantly mock the King of praise and prophecy and declare His servants destitute and injudicious.

But in the somber quiet of the whistling sand, where nothing exists between the sea of stars above and the ravening bones of His people below, bleached white and cracked open, the marrow a feast for a lucky dog or a home for an enterprising insect, in those sighing hills, the land heaves and cries out in labor for a people unborn.

The trees grow along the ground, bent in supplication, the rocky outcrop is sundered by flashing light and terrible thunder. Towers of polished bone are dashed to dust and the dull rumble of time ravages the faithless principality in a patient, seismic, impossibly drawn-out roar.

The Lion of Judah is coming, and the bones of the earth shake sin from their shoulders like snow from a starving bear. Lord that I would be a humble vessel in His sight, and not the snow beneath His feet, unmade before the awesome heat.