Blow the Trumpet at the New Moon

(After Psalm 81)

When everyone is saying it’s too late, it is you who must decide
it’s not too late.

Time is at hand. Raise a song. Sing loud with your voice
while it is day. Strike the cymbal while you have strength.

Go to the sea. Take your easel. Paint the wounded waves, the whitening
coral, give everything your best pink.

Paint long streaks of lavender in a scarlet sky. Turn to the east
and paint a field of wheat. Paint wrens nesting with falcons.

Show us a congress of crows lifting quick to the Morning Star.
Like galloping antelope restoring our rhythm and hope.

Paint bread and wine, a cascade of grapes, a chalice, every single thing
in form and function, created excellent in its own way.

Creator, who forgoes the cosmic halo and speaks in butterfly,
who rests in our heart’s atrium.

Who is a breathing Word, a black water strider,
exquisitely robed and floating on a shimmering creek.

Who answers in the secret place of thunder;
who says, Open your mouths wide, and I will fill it.

And we eat, supper after supper until we see our faces in the faces
of our foes. O bitter unveiling. O possible healing.

Shout a psalm! Get your Gibson, your Mel Bay chord charts, your
Neil Diamond songbook, your tambourine.

Blow the trumpet at the new moon.
Taps, never to be played again.

Imagine such peace. The lie of blood and soil exposed.
The law of tears revoked. Honey flowing from a rock.

It’s late. Not too late.
Speak with your hands, pray with your feet.