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
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