The Passing Over

Passover
The saddest of all miracles
And by the evidence
The history
Something that was absolutely
Called for
By the Lord
Against
The forces of the world
Extant in Pharaoh

We think it
Antique now
Perhaps
Since Egyptian is a style
And a history
To follow
With romance in thought
And purchasing

But it happened
Slavery had happened
The people lived
But poorly
The struggle for identity
After basic needs
The worst of all

And one of Egypt
Then of Midian
Was called
And did not want to come
But with his brother
And his sister
Called to lead
At least to take
The people
Out of there

No longer straws for bricks
Requiring miracle
To build

A miracle
So many miracles
To have a leader
To being
A prophet
Holding and excoriating
The court of many kings who
Also thought
In the lack of perspective
Once it had grown
They might as well be gods
And rule
Like their
Personalities
With their
Agendas

So there plagues
And again
We style these
And our imagination
Counts them
And the reason for their order
Is guessed at
But Moses said
There is only one reason
One plan
At work
As we sing
Today
To let the people go

Brutality
Built on
Presumptions to power
As well as
Divinity
The plagues persisted
(COVID is like these)
Until one last
Wave of pestilence
Invited
Unless Pharoah
With a practical heart
Against the magic
As they called it should
Let the people
Go

And it did not
The power could not relinquish
All it meant
To lose these people
Scared of them
For all their number
And maybe
Of their God
Unless
Unbelieving
Simply considered all of them
Moses
Who had been one of theirs
Another slave
Who had tasted of the best parts
Of the fertile land
Appearing by the Nile

And now that
Was a miracle
The gods who favored us
Each year
And there was back when
We don’t remember
The one who was
One of them
Whom we brought
To our side
Having predicted famine
And their God
Become one
Among our gods
To save us

So who is this person
Now
Whom we receive
Who would break free
And leading
All the others
And their God
Break free as well
And so lessen
Our treasuries
And pantheons

I will not release
I am Pharaoh
I am god
It cannot happen

And so the Passover
The first
And awful Passover
The angel pestilence
Save for protecting blood
Above the door
While the blood ceased in the firstborn
In every other house
And in the court
‘Til Pharoah
In new and tragic
Loneliness
Relented

And there was release
For who knows how many
(yes
God knows)
And then
Commemoration
As we have
With an empty chair
Should another prophet come

C L Couch


Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash