It’s a black and white thing. It’s either an individual reckoning or a deadly default. I made this monotype after reflecting on the thick heaviness over an excavation site we had toured many years earlier. This still haunts as a symbol of destination. The ancient city of Pergamum (and its repeated iterations throughout history) is where cultic practice left an entire proud city ruined. It is a warning for now; for I fear much of the world is heading in the same wrong direction.

Listen instead to the clear solitary cry of the Psalmist.

So, it’s about a choice of focus then, with an upward cry. We still have choice in time: the dark hole looming, or the only way out. It’s a black and white thing.

I will simply offer how a poet I recently heard took that same 5^th Psalm and put it into a personal sonnet:

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part,

Of one whose kindness is itself a shield,

Who understands the deep things of my heart

Better than I can ever do, I yield

Myself and my perplexities to him,

And in his house of mercy I am healed;

Healed of this world’s bloodthirstiness, its grim

Deceptions, all its weary wickedness,

The death-speak of its tyrants, as they hymn

The idols of excess, the emptiness

Of endless purchases, all washed away

Until my sight is cleansed. His righteousness

Makes my way plain, and leads me through the play

Of early morning light, to worship him

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day.

(Malcolm Guite, “Psalm 5: V Verba Mea Auribus”)