I am studying Psalms with a group on Zoom.  Each week, in addition to studying, discussing and taking apart the week’s Psalm, we have the opportunity to interpret it, rewrite it, draw or paint it, set it to music. A couple of weeks ago a line in Psalm 42 inspired this poem. Hear my reading of it, if you like.

Taunting

“…my enemies revile me when they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ “ Psalm 42:11

Oh, you enemies!
Would you stop already?

Reviling us since,
since when?
Since forever.

Taunting, torturing. terrorizing.
Dor l’dor
taking our lives.

And for what?
To still your own mishegoss?
Soothe your envy?
Quiet your incessant fears?
Your perennial angst that
we grow too large?

Pharaoh tried. Abimelech, too.
And Balak?
At the very edge of milk and honey.
His curses sprouted blessings.
We wove them into song.
Daily song, no less.

“Where is your God?”

Funny you should ask.
Did you forget that
water became blood
staff became serpent
an entire raging sea
became a dry path to freedom?

Has it worked,
this obsession of yours?
Are we gone?
Have we quit?
Ginnick already.
Give it up.

Have you phased out the moon?
Placed a bit upon curling tongues
of wave
and halted the oceans?
Rockets and planes aside,
Have you forced gravity into submission?

“Where is your God?” you ask.
As if one bad day or pogrom or
Holocaust proves anything
but your own eternal sickness.

Our God is here.
Our. God. Is. Here.

In our prayers.
In our hope.
In our desperation
and in our anger.
In our believing
our composing
our writing
our children
our inventing
our striving
our healing
our learning
our studying.

“Where is your God?” you ask.

Our God is in our living.

Give it up, silly kinder. Let it go.
As the moon
as the tides
as gravity

We are here. Ad Olam.
For. Ever.

Debra B Darvick © 2021

Dor l’dor — from generation to generation
mishegoss — craziness; senseless behavior
Ginnick — enough
kinder — children (rhymes with cinder)

photo courtesy of Martin Darvick