From Egypt in the Moonlight

I don’t remember the look of your face,

but I hear, even now, your voice saying,

“Wake, son, the Pharaoh says to go.

We are going.”

What you had spoken with eager dreams for years,

What I had seen dance across your face for decades,

You now said with awed uncertainty,

when the truth of it was delivered into your hands.

My earliest memory is of

                following your finger to the horizon

when you said, “Adonai will provide.

We will go and we will not want.”

As we pack, we begin to see

that if Adonai will provide

He will have to do it alongside us

on the road, keeping up as best he can.

Without a word exchanged

everyone knows –

whatever the cost

we will be out of the camps

                and past the gates

before first light.

“One hundred forty-four thousand

                mornings spent as a

                captive people,” you said,

“Our next morning will be as the free children of the Lord.”

Fourteen thousand four hundred mornings later

You are dead;

Mother is dead;

Brother Elihu is dead.

Obed the fool is dead

(somehow as a child, I thought he would be immune.)

The grandchildren you never knew

Mourn their mother Sara

                who is dead.

Last night, Moses himself

                walked

                into the bosom of Abraham.

And in the moonless night,

                our wilderness hearts died alone and despairing.

This morning, as the heat from our campfires drives the fog away.

                Ten thousand people

                rub sleep from their eyes

                and point as one

                across the valley.

                Aaron nods;

Miriam’s hymn breaks from our lips

                Our people are alive and on the threshold of our birthright.