— When the Time Comes

The Nile at dawn.
Seven fat cows rising from the reeds,
seven lean ones after them,
and the lean ate the fat
and looked no fuller.

Seven full ears on one stalk,
seven scorched by the east wind.

A dream of a land
where plenty and hunger
live on the same riverbank.

*

This week the country woke
to both houses of Congress
in new hands.

Some sang.
Some mourned.
I sat by the window
and asked the old question:
peace for whom?
justice for whom?

*

Two years the cupbearer forgot.
Then: “I remember my faults today.”

Justice often begins
with one person remembering
a name left behind the walls.

*

Joseph, shaved and clothed,
before the throne:
“It is not in me.”

The reed is hollow
so the breath can sing.
Power is hollow too,
until it is filled
with someone else’s need.

*

Pharaoh’s ring.
Fine linen.
A gold chain.

But the true sign of his office
was the storehouse:
grain set aside in the fat years
so no child would starve
in the lean.

There is no peace
on an empty stomach.
There is no justice
that forgets the granary.

*

I preached peace
and sometimes kept silent
where justice should have spoken.

I know the Friend
does not choose between them.
They are two hands
of the same embrace,
two banks of one river.

*

Manasseh:
God has made me forget my hardship.
Ephraim:
God has made me fruitful
in the land of my affliction.

Not forgetting the wrong.
Forgetting the bitterness,
so the field can bear again.

*

Then the famine came,
over Egypt,
over all the earth.

And the doors of the storehouse opened,
not to one tribe,
not to one party,
but to every hungry hand
that came.