Our Feet Were Sore

Our Feet Were Sore

(“They camped at the Lord's command, and they set out at the Lord's command." Numbers 9:23a)

We heard voices like people playing with faces
in the sand.
We were precise in our aims and missed the landscapes
where electricity was untamed. We knew what we knew,
and ignored what was created outside our myopic view.

We loved to camp on the traces of history,
we drew our lineage to boats from the east. We were
manifestly destined for this
with our gunpowder and bibles;
we determined who was savage by
the primitive campfires they lit.

We were poor, but not poor enough.
We were sure, like heads, not tails,
on our coins. We inscribed our mottos
in latin.

We looked for God and found him at the
end of our weapons. We won, we thought,
when we would not see what we not-knew.

Then we blamed it on infidels, we pulled our wagons tight;
the circle was broken, though, when what hemmed us in
kept out the light, the love of another whose horses
were wilder than the mannerly company we kept.

We saw the smoke descend like a cloud and vowed we
would destroy it again, this darkness we thought was a
stranglehold on everything our DNA screamed must be.
We heard the fire rise from the camp like lighthouse bells
that toll safe harbor and toothy waves. We tried to
quench it,
wrench it from the coast
where its beacon invited the scraps of clippers and sailors
we wanted to keep out.

Cloud and fire, when will we follow so closely
that our own desires are swallowed by the flaming cloud
of love divine,
and call, yes, announce, proclaim it all a dance of love
in dark and light. Our feet were sore from conquest anyway.