Moses

I jump and let out a muffled scream while the storm gets nearer and nearer.

The wail of wind, the first drops of rain, but it’s the light that fills me with terror.

Flashes light the sky again and again, and I can make out the wide eyes of fear

on the faces of all the women and men for they dread the dogs may appear.

Our friend, the night, our shroud, our cloak, who thus far has helped to conceal us,

has betrayed his own dark, hapless folk, and now laughs as he tries to reveal us.

The line has stopped; the people kneel down while the rain cuts our skin like knives,

though our entire group to the smallest child knows that delay may cost us our lives.

Two silent shapes on this raucous night approach like a ghost and its shadow

They stand before us and survey our lot.

One towers like a mountain; one stands low.

The mountain kneels down still towering o’er the other, a tiny woman, the one they call Moses.

She commands us to listen and speaks of a valley

With a mouth that both opens and closes.

“That valley’s just ahead,” she tells us with calm,

“with an open mouth to swallow and hide us,

but should the day break ‘fore we make the vale, the slave-chasers will capture and divide us.

In chains, we’ll return to that forsaken land where the black is slave and the white is king,

but as long as the blood courses in my tired veins,

I will breathe my last ‘fore I allow such a thing.”

She closes hers eyes and says a quick prayer, then gives us all a reassuring glance.

“Though I’ve made many trips to the promised land, I’ve not lost a soul, not one child, woman or man.”

She turns and walks on to the front of the line, and we stand as one for we’d heard her well;

at this woman’s command, we’d cross the Jordan;

we’d follow Old Moses through the gates of hell