Don’t tell me politics is not poetry.
History has its slant rhymes.
One person’s pharaoh is another’s oligarch.
As if we were in Egypt, as if indeed.
Metaphor, meet history this fraught year.
Here we are.
There they are,
those Hebrews who choose to leave,
to step into the muck and mud of a sea of reeds
fertile enough to nurture a multitude, yet perilous,
aware of a current they dare not fathom,
risking a fate they cannot know,
their difficult choice demanded
by conscience, fear, and faith in radical collusion.
A magnificence of courageous disorder,
heeding the beckoning of one whose strangled words
somehow matter beyond one definition.
Perhaps miraculously, believe it or not,
they emerge, hearts beating to the rhythm of Miriam’s meter.
Here we are,
our seas as dangerous to us as the Nile is to them,
our choice a paradox of dismay, compassion, and desire.
We are slaves to present worldly powers only
if we let us be so, so be it,
waiting for the magnetic gesture,
the magnanimous phrase.
Is there a water I am meant to cross?
I hear no startling call from high above, or from below.
I sense no irresistibly intimate hand to lead me.
I am bent and mourn among the shuddering citizens
bewildered by this bludgeoning weighing
so heavily upon our country’s history of hope.
Here I am.
Tell me, please, there is a voice within,
speaking of strangled,
that can be turned from inside out
if we reach for it.
Here I am, reflecting aloud,
Please, turn your voice from inside out.
Here I am, listening with intention.
Let us transform our sighs from one denatured cry
to a vibrant mighty chorus.
Let us mirror myth.
Perhaps, together we are the miracle
building, mishkan-like,
a land where we chant the anthem
that we yearn to mean.
Is it here?
joann green breuer
