Forsaking Horeb

---------------------/Forsaking Horeb: Moses’ Thoughts upon Witnessing the Burning Bush

Don’t you know that this is the biggest of nights

where sheep and lambs and even the vast expanses of desert sands

seem less a stage than a captive audience

this isn’t about Horeb anymore, now just an emblem of a life abandoned  

but no longer your own where even the air is transcendent

the brush, the tumbleweeds, scattered stones become the courtyard

of superlative meaning

and the sun slowly dissipates deferential to an illumination of philosophy

although it is midday. The former heat sweltering repents and

all over your body you feel cold chills

the cacophonous voice of the man you killed attenuates

looking down, no more hallucinations of his blood on your palms

his last words:

“Moses, this is goodbye”

this is the precipice of atonement the ending of an epoch

forsaking excuses and raising expectation heavenward

to believe in freedom, that a people can and should inherit God’s promises

eschewing guilt laden whips cracked on backs of self-condemnation

of a better tomorrow and a day revolutionized

closing your eyes dumfounded and excited at a new world

where against the tyranny of the wicked the dreams of the innocent prevail

dawning

like our passion, a perpetual renewal that demands we take

off the sandals of our past unbelief. A land of consciousness

where everything is holy and hopefulness is a fire

but the bushes do not burn

------------Exodus 3:1-6

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.