An Artifact for the Future

An Artifact for the Future

(“At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic.” Exodus 14:24)

The ground in front of us tilted and almost melted away.
We hadn’t counted on anything stopping our campaign,
we hadn’t planned for any opposition.
Just like that we were in the dark again;
the wind was dusty and the sky was gone.
The water nearly swallowed us up and the
morning fled like a dirge underneath our feet.
We had conceived of a quick weekend operation,
a short foray into the jaws of destiny.
We did not expect to come home so wounded,
to return with so little to result for our time.
How could we anticipate this scattering, this
chattering after training so well?
We called on our gods, we devised our sacrifices,
we practiced our prayers and were certain we
had been heard. We could not lose.
We could only win.
We planned on kissing our wives when we returned,
but we were still recovering from the frightening
thunder that came from nowhere. We thought we
were impervious, we thought we could win anywhere
with the help of our gods and our technology.
But those we enslaved escaped; we were meant to
bring them back. They became invisible and we,
confused and dazed, decided the time had come to
retreat. Everything we believed had become an artifact
for the future to unearth. We did not look forward to
giving our full report.