— When the Past Stands Before Us

Empty jars in Canaan.
Rumor of grain
coming up from the south.

This November,
aid trucks sit idle in Darfur,
no fuel in their tanks.
In Gaza, ration lists grow shorter.
Here at home, five million names
are gone from the food rolls.

“Why do you stare
at one another?
Go down,
that we may live.”

*

Ten went.
The youngest stayed,
held back by a father
who had already lost one son.

They bowed to the ground
before a stranger
in linen and gold.

He knew their faces.
They did not know his.

*

“You are spies.”

“No, my lord.
We were twelve.
One is no more.”

He heard himself spoken of
as a dead man.

So nations talk
of the ones who are no more,
counting graves
in Kyiv and Khartoum.

*

Three days in the dark,
then the old wound spoke:
“We saw his anguish.
We would not listen.”

This week a country counted ballots
and heard its own voice
come back changed.
Is it a verdict,
or the first stirring
of memory?

The buried thing
had only been waiting.

*

The governor turned aside
and wept.

In Brussels, envoys sketch
how a ruined land might be rebuilt,
while the night skies
still trade fire.

Tears behind a closed door.
Talk of rebuilding
under falling fire.

*

He bound Simeon.
He filled their sacks.
In the mouth of each,
the silver returned
like a question.

“What has God done to us?”

*

At home the old man cried,
“Joseph is gone.
Simeon is gone.
All this is against me.”

He saw only loss,
not the son he mourned
feeding the nations.

*

So it is
inside a broken world.
We see famine.
Bread is being kneaded
out of sight.

The wound is not healed,
but it is no longer hidden.

Truth opens the first door.
Mercy waits behind it,
weeping,
not yet ready
to say its name.