Miriam Contemplates Her Condition
Miriam Contemplates Her Condition
Julie L. Moore
Numbers 12
I cannot feel my body—
hands, arms, feet, legs,
all numb, all suddenly
succumbed to this condition
of Yahweh’s cold shoulder.
Who am I here in the wilderness,
expelled from my people’s camp?
Do I even exist?
O, I remember the day Yahweh
breathed into the Sea of Reeds
and the waters seized our enslavers,
Pharaoh and his men,
their chariots stripped
of might while we reached
the other side, delivered on dry land!
That was the day I lived up
to my name, nevi’ah. I led
the women in dance, and we wove
my holy ode, my prophecy,
with threads of praise,
tambourines ecstatic with victory,
song surging with horse and rider
hurled into the sea!
But my words failed me today.
My heart led me astray as I seethed:
that Cushite wife of Moses,
her ebony face, her elegant limbs—
who was he to enjoy such company,
to risk enmity with his mission,
when Aaron and I had been beside
him all along? I, who was his sentry,
I, who was his savior, slyly watching
the tevah bobbing in the Nile’s reeds,
seeing him found, then securing
the wet nurse, our mother.
I am the one who did that!
Hour by hour, lumps
swell on my earlobes and cheeks,
a menace thrums in my nose,
then pours forth. I bleed.
I wipe my face with my robe
till I’m ablaze like the bush
my brother saw so many years ago.
The same consuming Elohim
who enflamed its leaves
and did not burn it to the ground
has incited a riot of lesions on my skin,
pale and painless. I am ghastly,
ghostly, and unfit for service.
But, oh, I heard Yahweh
exhale into the sea, whip the water
into thunderous antiphonies
answering Pharaoh’s sinister schemes!
I beheld Moses stretching
his hand high before the sea.
No one can take that away from me.
The sun is setting here where I have
stalled our journey. I am beside myself.
I am alone. I somehow sense,
though I have lost all my power,
that these seven days will introduce
me to the darkest parts of myself.
I will weep. I will survive. But I’ll never
reach the promised land.
Julie L. Moore
Poet & Professor
Julie is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee, the author of four poetry collections, including, most recently, Full Worm Moon, which won a 2018 Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award and received honorable mention for the Conference on Christianity and Literature's 2018 Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has appeared in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Image, and more. She is the Writing Center Director at Taylor University, where she is also the poetry editor for Relief Journal. Learn more about her work at julielmoore.com
Photography by Ivan Bandura