In my Kallah class on Writing the Psalms of Your Heart, we spent our first day on psalms of praise. We brainstormed a bit about what psalms are and how they work, read some psalms of praise (both classical and contemporary), and spent some time in class writing our own psalms and then sharing them aloud.

I decided it wasn't fair of me to ask my students to do something I wasn't also willing to do, so I worked on a psalm along with them. Just for kicks, here's the psalm I wrote, lightly revised since its original creation. Enjoy!

FOR ICE CREAM

a psalm of praise

Praise for these soft cold curls
of maple walnut ice cream.
Praise for the scent of earliest spring

distilled into pungent sweetness.
Praise for the cold, so shocking in July,
as ice cream meets my tongue.

Praise for the cows who ate the grass
and made the milk, praise for the farmer
who sat on a low stool

in a barn that smelled of manure and hay
to squeeze the udders, or the milking machine
which impersonally coaxed the milk forth.

Praise for the giant mixer
which churned the wet slush of ingredients
with all the grace of a February snowplow.

For the trees which grew the walnuts,
for the maples whose lifeblood was donated
to this worthy cause: praise

to the One Whose abundance flowed
into creation, Who takes pleasure
in my pleasure, now and always.