Another Kind of Psalm
By Janina Marie Rivera
I.
At this moment,
Your Word comes alive
with a fire in its syllables,
peeling away calloused flesh
and piercing what could only be
a rough cocoon:
memory,
habit,
pain—
realities given skin
in a sheen of molten faces.
And yet,
I emerge,
soft and vulnerable
my wings
unfurling,
ready for new flight.
I lift from this, my tomb,
and step into a genesis
fluid with Your movement.
“Hope,” You say.
It comes, a still flame in the dark
gathering momentum
till it bursts.
II.
You have been hovering
unseen in my darkness,
O Song of the Ages.
For that is what You are—
The Forever Psalm that resurrects;
The Shepherd in whose embrace I hide.
The Universe sings of You,
breathes of You,
dances to the tune of contradictions:
death to life, the invisible for the visible;
the Eternal for the temporal.
In this tune, I hear the cadence
of a sweet secret You have engulfed
in layers of millennia.
It is a name You call,
a name I respond to.
You reach—
Your hand
plunging
into the depths of destiny.
III.
My flight to the unknown
is simply a discovery
of Your womb,
Beloved Creator.
My heart whirls through sky
to soar in a Love like Yours.
What is life if not lived for You?
What is my heart if not given to You?
You guide me by Your eye,
leading me
to the fiery heights of sun
and the shadows of stars,
where loving You is limitless,
and being with You
becomes the one and only thing
I live for.
This song.
Your song.
My song.
We sing
and in this place
of Your hovering,
we fly.
First published in the poetry collection, Joyful Light: Modern Christian Poetry by Filipino Women by OMF Literature.
Janina Marie Rivera is the author of the book, A Night Bird Sings of Blindness and Fear and has co-authored the devotional, Dawns, published by OMF Literature. She is a contributing poet in the books Joyful Light and Whitmanthology: on Loss and Grief by Various Authors. She is the Editor-in-Chief of One Voice Magazine.
