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Save me, O God...The torrent washes over me. -Psalm 69

At the footbridge,
his dog tugged her leash
and he followed her down the bank to the creek

which she ignored,
nosing the undersides of leaves,
her eyelids closed, a connoisseur.

The canopy opened
to a stream of cloudless blue
above the stream, and to one his phone tapped,

a trickle at first
from the waves, four billion per second --
a smirking official, a pundit's outrage

which he scrolled half aware
of thunder, or the sound of a truck
nearby, some rally at the school behind him,

swelling so
he thought he heard Slay them! and
Wipe them out! and Break their teeth!

splashing his ankles,
and reaching his knees as he turned
too late toward higher ground,

upended and kicking
and gasping for air, and thrashing
the arm not anchored to the dog. The dog!

She shook her tags
and looked back to see, was he ready?
Phone in his pocket, they crossed the bridge.

Image by Susan Rouse.
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I'd already drafted this poem when Psalm 69 popped up in the Prayer Book's reading queue with its torrent of curses. I'm reassured that my darkest feelings are expressed, if not sanctioned, by Scripture.

Likewise, I was surprised by an echo in my poem of the horse who "gives his harness bells a shake / to ask if there is some mistake" from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," one of the first grown-up poems I ever knew. - WSS