Walking With Moses: Where the Light of Netzach Lands

Sunset over the eastside of the Sandia Mountains, Amy Ariel

Deltoids and rotator cuffs strain as
sensation prickles in your fingers and
the sun hardens your arms to stone.
Aaron on one side, Hur on the other,
they hold what you cannot hold alone.
    Your hands are the battle.
When you drop them, we lose.
When they rise, we win.
Endurance is not a solitary victory.

Heart wrenched by her death
by everything
you didn’t run or hide.
You struck the rock;
it gave us your tears.
The cost of staying can be
forever after wondering if
we did the wrong thing
while trying so very hard
to do the right one.
Even after,
you didn’t resign from the job.
You looked at us,
saw us,
and maybe for the first time we also saw you.
Hems dragging in the sand
we walked on together.

You returned and returned and
returned
again.
Ten times.
More times,
but also those ten.
You faced power
putting your life, your comfort, and your safety
on the line of liberation.
You followed us;  we followed you.

Korach stood up and said: Who made you?
and the earth opened its maw and swallowed deeply.
Shaken you still listened when
the daughters came.
Mahlah. Noah. Hoglah. Milcah. Tirzah.
Five names. Five truths. Another kind of question:
What if it could be different?
You looked out at the blue horizon line,
echoes of Nile lapping against pitch,
against woven straw,
the comforting hands of your mothers
in the fabric’s wind rhythm
against your back.
You brought it to God.
And the law
changed
right there in the text.
We are the yes that can become no,
and we are also the no that can become yes.

You heard your siblings
brother and sister,
beside you,
against you,
speaking your love’s name behind your back,
speaking your name behind your back.
They weren’t wrong.
They weren’t right, either.
You chose not to choose between them
and God.
You prayed.
El na refa na lah.
Please, God, please
heal her.
You meant her and I think you mean us,
we all watch over you in the reeds.

The reeds.
Where the beginning is inside the middle,
the love strong enough to let go, and
the love strong enough to hold on.
The reeds
that bend and straighten more than ten times,
that let the wind hold and support their arms,
that speak in a rustle,
that caress a basket,
still floating.