Waiting 4: Miriam

Forty decades in the desert and we 
were worn down, weary from our weakness, 
despairing of doubt,
catching past only in fragments like 
morning manna: a whiff of Egypt's garlic, 
a vague floating thought of dangers
lurking like crocodiles in the Nile.

Some fragments heavied us with 
the burdens of their memories: water bursting angrily from rock,
rebellions and plagues, 
golden calves smelting in the sun.

Others lifted like leaven:
the scent of lamb, blood like boon upon lintel,
waters waving apart,
a triumph of tambourines.

Others still flickered in their
seeming impossibility, yet stuck
as the bedrock above which
all else was possible:
defiant midwives, babies saved,
and a young girl waiting silent in the bulrushes
for an infant brother to be saved and to save,
stubby fingers pointing as if to say,

Wait. You'll see. There's something even better,
someone coming beyond Jordan. 
Forty years waiting. Yet we'll see.