Numbers 11 — the manna speaks
What the Ground Kept Giving
A sonnet in the
voice of the manna
There was a morning
once they held me near,
turned me in their
hands and did not speak,
tasted me as
something mild and meek,
and that small
silence was all I would hear.
I watched that quiet
thin to tired use,
to dull mouths,
grumbling, then to open spite.
They cried for meat
and garlic every night
and called me
nothing worth their time to choose.
The quail came down.
I fell beside the dead,
the ones who ate too
much and did not wake.
I did not leave. I
fell for their own sake
across the ground
where they had dropped their bread.
I loved them past
the point they wanted me.
That is the only way
that love can be.
Numbers 14 — the sandals speak
Forty Years of Walking Nowhere
A sonnet in the
voice of the sandals
I was made for a
short walk, a few weeks,
the kind of road a
man could count in days.
Instead I learned
the desert's longer ways,
the same sand over
and over as time speaks.
I held the feet of
those who would not atone,
who stood at the
edge and turned their faces back,
who chose the circle
over the straight track
and wore the same
worn path through dust and stone.
I felt them slow. I
felt them cease to be.
I wore their weight
until the weight was gone,
was passed to
younger feet to carry on
and cross the river
I had waited years to see.
The feet that
crossed were not the feet that fled.
I carried both. I
grieved the ones now dead.
Content based upon
Numbers chapters 11-14; 20-24; 27
AI Summary
