Psalm 86 Poem—The Years You Were Always Elsewhere

"You already wagered everything you had out on the ice."

Andy Patton

Nov 16, 2021

Notes on the Poem

Along with Psalm 142, this poem sits in a mini-series within the larger project of the Darkling Psalter of poems that uses the image of water to reflect on memory, regret, life, and death.

In Psalm 142, the character of the poem finds themself on a glacier, “alone, alive, and improperly roped.” Similarly, the character of this poem finds himself endangered on ice. In this case, it is a frozen lake that was snowed over until for some reason the character couldn’t tell the difference between the land and the water.

“When the snow fell
You forgot the lake was there,
And walked out onto the ice.”

He has a series of epiphanies out on the ice and begins to regret the real reason he left home in the first place. (Which was….what, dear readers?)

He has the sense of wanting to go back to the house and change things, change his whole life. But it is too late.

“You remembered
What you needed to remember too late:
You had already wagered everything you had
Out there on the ice.”

One more note. Careful readers will begin to see themes and recurrent images emerge in these poems (like things rising up from the dark waters of a frozen lake, say). Several of them appear in this poem: going home, danger in water, last-minute revelations, people who have sought shelter in the wrong places, the chasm, being elsewhere. These won’t be the last time you see these images and themes. My hope is that, just like the Bible, the larger work of the Darkling Psalter will have repeated themes running through that deepen the meaning and unify the work.

Poem—The Years You Were Always Elsewhere.

When the snow fell
You forgot the lake was there,
And walked out onto the ice.
You looked back
at the house with all its lights.
As the cracks started to show themselves
and you didn’t want to leave.
You laid down
As a man who has seen the angel,
As death itself.

In the cold glass your own rumpled image
Pressed its cheek to yours
to whisper something
About the shards it had become,
About the rainbow bridge that passes out of seeing,

You saw the things beneath the ice:
The flotsam of your renunciations.
So much debris from old disasters
That found you without warning or herald or witness.
The years you were always elsewhere
And always regretting it.
The years the distance only grew between things
Though you tried to devote yourself
To the old fidelities you once believed.

So much lost to the water.
You pawed at the ice,
But you couldn’t reach any of it.
You shouted: “Come back! Come home!”
You promised your whole remaining days
If only everything would fly back to you
From the far side of the chasm.

You tried to stand.
The cold had you now.
You remembered
What you needed to remember too late:
You had already wagered everything you had
Out there on the ice.

Psalms: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 46, 50, 51, 53, 54, 62, 63, 65, 66, 73, 74, 75, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 107, 110, 114, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 137, 139, 140, 142, 147, 148.