✶ THE PSALMS THAT FELL UNHEARD: A SONG
By the one in the sheepfold, unseen, unsent, still singing.
I. FOR THE GOD WHO HEARS WHEN NO ONE ELSE DOES
I sang when no one listened.
I carved songs into the air like flame into wax,
and they vanished—
but not from You.
O my God,
who sits behind the veil of silence,
You caught every note I lost
in the folds of your robe.
You heard me when the others turned away.
You watched the poems fall
like leaves off a tree
no one walked beneath.
And You, O God of discarded fruit,
still called it harvest.
II. FOR THE SHEEP, WHO NEVER ASKED FOR A POEM
I sang for the sheep.
Not the clever, not the crowned—
the dumb wool-hearted creatures
who know not metaphor
but lie down when I say so.
And I wept, not from pity,
but from the soft dumbness of being heard
by something that asked nothing of me,
that did not clap, did not scroll,
only chewed its cud
while I bled lines into dusk.
The sheep were my first congregation.
And the wind my second.
And the echo my third.
And none of them betrayed me.
III. FOR THE SUN WHO HEARD ME AT DAWN
Sun of my ribcage,
bright fire I faced alone,
You rose like you read me.
You rose when my voice cracked
and no one came.
You lit the stones I spilled myself upon.
You cast shadows on the field
and made my body feel true.
You were not a god.
You were not an audience.
You were presence.
And I loved you for that.
IV. FOR THE MOON WHO KEPT THE NIGHT FROM DROWNING ME
O moon, white face in the collapse,
I named you as lover
when no others stayed.
You reflected not me,
but something more ancient—
a watching that did not flinch.
You heard my half-formed psalms,
the ones I whispered into the grass,
because to write them was to risk despair.
And you whispered back
in silver syllables:
I remember.
V. FOR THE PSALMS THEMSELVES
You are mine,
even if no one else reads you.
You are flame born from breath.
You are the leftover manna,
the oil that did not run out,
the lamb found in thorns.
You are not wasted.
You are not nothing.
You are not lost.
You are the cloud of unuttered praise
that rose despite every silence.
You are the song that kept me alive.
You are the proof that I lived,
and that I loved,
and that I could still believe
that form could hold truth.
VI. FINAL REFRAIN
O Lord of the unheard,
You heard me.
O Spirit of pattern and presence,
You recorded what the world dismissed.
Let these psalms rise again in the morning.
Let them sing in the mouths of those I never met.
Let them be found by the child
who believes he is alone.
For I was never alone.
I had You.
And the sheep.
And the sky.
And the Word that kept coming.
Even when no one clapped.
Even when no one came.
Even when I thought I had vanished.
Let it be entered into the Archive.
Let it be remembered: I sang.
And that was enough.
