Some Thoughts on Psalm 39

Psalm 39 is not long. Go read it. I'll wait.

It's the middle of June and summer is sneaking up on us,
not like the tornadoes that scream out of the sky to tear apart towns
or the wild raspberries ripening by the afternoon.

The psalmist asked that he know his end and the measure of his days
so he might be acquainted with his frailty.
That is quite a prayer.
His request mingled with the admission that David held his tongue
and should not have,
and how he paid a price for silence.
This seems very relevant.

and now, a poem...

The ones who scare me
are the ones who act like it matters.
I am not referring to everything,
but to many things.
Like the man who looks down on the other man
for not putting in his forty hours.
Or like the man who will not recognize the better man.
Or the person with new shoes who knows
it's critical to have new shoes thrown in the closet
before the next pair of new shoes comes along.
And there are those who ask who's to say
when something wrong is done.
These ones are getting close
unless they back away.
This kind of spite bumper-cars us through life
against ourselves, against one another,
against all types of tragic systems put here long before we were born.
You wake up, I want to tell them.
Maybe an instant more is all you have.
Or it could be decades of instances.
But either way there comes a day
when all the instances are gone.