She returned to her father’s tent with her two boys
as her fire-touched husband wandered into Egypt
to ask a favor of a wall of granite
Though her days are filled with laughter
at the remembered jokes she shares with her six sisters
whose names are written only in the book of the infinite mother,
her nights are restless and in her dreams she is a young girl
wandering a luminous field, searching for some lost thing
when a birdwing glints against the dawn
and a scent of hope fills her until she knows
she must follow this shadow flitting lightly and humbly
as a brown thrush with its dark eyes beckoning her forward
As she trails the fluttering presence
through oak trees and out into a wild barrenness
the umbral bird grows legs and lengthens into a child
with eyes black like the underside of stones
In this gentle revenant Zipporah sees much of herself and
in a knowing beyond reason she recognizes
her fifth-great grandmother whose life has always
been a song that lives inside the children of Midian
and dances them in their distress and wanderings
Just as God sometimes comes as an infant
who needs to be held and nourished since
a parent’s strength makes it strange and unapproachable
Keturah appears small and needy, a daughter
whose mystery will unfold to the delighted mother
and Zipporah longs to envelop her and carry her
She is not the trumpet but the hollow inside the bell
She is not the ant, but the entrance to its home
She sits on every drop of rain and rides the veins of leaves
Trust the kin-dom inside your own heart
Your questions will sing your sleep and bring you God’s breath
Peace is not passive and every stone is a prayer laid in your path
I planted tales inside your father’s stories
that sound like silences until the ears of your ears awake
Stillness is one of the windows into the infinite
The two girls take each other by the hand
and lifting their eyes to the clouds they spread their arms
and together they take to the sky
(Exodus 18)
