A Handpicked Poem presented by Michael Steffen

 A Handpicked Poem

presented by Michael Steffen

from Rattle Fall 2026 (presented online 23 September 2026)

Psalm 131

by George David Clark

My heart is not proud.

I am satisfied with generic cereal.

I drive a Toyota Camry

to work in the right-hand lane

and do not rush

through yellow traffic lights.

My most important meetings

are not important

to the welfare of states

or peoples or businesses.

They mean nothing

to the ebb and flow of history,

and somehow less

to today’s financial markets.

Lawyers look through me

and bankers, makers

of deals. As they should.

Strong men and beautiful women

see all the way through me

as though I were dust

set briefly in motion by wind,

which I am.

I am not proud of heart,

not very. But I woke early

this morning for an audience

with the Most High God

in which we decided

after some dispute

that He would keep doing

what He’s been doing

since the earth was young:

putting sleeves of ice

on the limbs of dogwood

and taking them off again,

sending the nuthatch

and the chickadee to sift

sunflower seeds in the feeder,

smiling on the wicked and a few

of the just, and stabbing

my prideful heart

invisibly, twisting the icicle

blade and ruffling

the hair I just combed.

That’s fine. That’s fine.

Frees me to ignore

what the president’s up to,

to forget the celebrities

who every once in a while

stop hating me just long enough

to demand my love and attention,

to neglect the mob

justifiably indifferent

to my rapidly decomposing

accomplishments,

my feelings, and my thoughts—

which I only borrowed anyways.

Frees me up to disregard

a future I won’t own

and the past that never

knew me, to light

my one square foot

of the present on fire

and let Him blow me wherever.

I get on my knees. I should stay

on my knees and gnaw

at the pride in my heart.

I wanted to let go of Clark’s poem. I could have loved it ending with I get on my knees. But I didn’t like the drawn-out ending with its cynical resignation and reversal of sense, the shift from My heart is not proud at the beginning of the poem to the wholly contradictory state of having pride enough left to get down on one’s knees and keep gnawing on it. Which makes enough sense in that no humility can ever be enough, just as no vanity can ever. Critics cry contradiction, religion with its allowance of mystery admits paradox. Poetry operates more freely in its wide range from solemnity and praise to irony, scrutiny and even desecration.

The title of the poem with its evocation of a religious text directs me to the comparison between the two distinct bodies of inspiration, religion and poetry… Religion’s primary purpose is to edify and make faith durable, and so it allows itself little if any confusion about its expression. That does lay the discipline open to hypocrisy—one of poetry’s most coveted preys.

The rascals of poetry have for long profited from the stricter demands on religion. When the lights of worldliness stray—and when have they failed to?—from our understanding of the better way, be it from God or just from a long tradition of precedents that have helped our better minds know right from wrong, religion marks its quiet difference and holds to the truth and grace it knows, while poetry opens the door to the rags and bones of the day, to mimicry and mockery and also, perhaps even more perilous or sorrowful, to intellectual resignation. But where the buck stops.

Underlying sarcasm is no short supply in Clark’s poem, especially in the heart of it where he speaks of the allowances granted by his dearest democratic right: He is free. Free to ignore what the president’s up to, and to forget the celebrities and their vanity so in the public’s eye, and to neglect the mob who’s indifferent to his poetry. (Clark rightfully airs, as a poet with a mission to bring value and meaning and weight to the prompts of language and thought, his frustration—even resignation about our culture’s celebrities who command so much attention and authority and so dictate vacuous materialism to the happening core of our society, the once dangerous but now for the most part deer-in-the-headlights youth culture and young professionals—Strong men and beautiful women…)

Reading the poem, moreover, I’m reminded it’s nothing less than our most powerful instinct at play when we talk about our pride. Our first nature’s command is: Be Prideful! Survive, above all, and on that impulse—climb, climb, be at the top of the heap if at all possible. Even in the event of an air disaster, we’re reminded to secure our own oxygen masks before helping others.

Only our capacity for imagination and delusion equals our vanity (under nature’s command to live, to be). That is why humility is so hard to come by, and why, all in all, acceptance is indispensable to our sanity and best thinking—in clarity, for most of us, about our own just averageness. Lucidity of his common belonging is what made the character Tom Joad and his author John Steinbeck so memorable to us. Dickens and Twain empower us with Romantic imagination, to elevate the plainest among us, or often the oppressed, to spellbinding compassion, onto social reversals and triumph and self-esteem (often with a lot of humor). Yet

the mind full of unpurchased entitlement, holiness, nobility and splendor coming to terms with the clay, ashes and dust (generic cereal and driving a Toyota Camry), this catches our attention (admiration) in the other direction, reminding us that our true ideals lie in the middle ground. Much as we need to inflate ourselves with inspiration, we need to weigh ourselves soberly with common sense and what is actually possible. This is what classicists mean when they say they go both ways.

Finally, though something in me squirms as Clark’s irony devolves into sarcasm, I catch glimpses of how the uncomfortable progression is in fact an adequate reflection of what people are really feeling these days, with the economy breaking away from its chains. Our growing unease about being able to make ends meet. And that stemming in large part from the nation’s commitment in a war few of us think we should be in. Too many innocent lives are being cast to destitution. Few of us have the space or wherewithal to articulate the gravity we’re acquiescing to. But we feel it. The poet citing the psalm won’t let the complex, elusive hypocrisy res