Caleb to His Grandson II: Second Crossing

Would you harass my age to tell
their names? You know them well:
Shammua, Shaphat, Sethur, Palti, Igal,
Guel, Gaddi, Nabbi, Gaddiel, Ammiel,
Joshua and I surveyed the land –
a man for each tribe, but ten
of them lied. Faithless had they spied
and fearfully had spoken. I cried,
“Go up at once! Are we not armed
by God?” But their dark words more harmed
us all than Anak’s sons, binding
death to doubt, damning our hiding
from destiny. Forty nights
without faith they spied the land,
so forty years we trod the sand
with no hope or land in sight.

Consumed with acrid sores that ran
like mild and honey, the lying ten
first fell. More horribly the masses
wandered, sentenced, till carcasses
dotted the desert like morning manna,
and the roaming feet of Israel
were truly those of children.

When the
last corpse collapsed, it fell
to Joshua to rise and lead
us. So ever are the seeds
of the faithless, sprouting in the end
the fear they but prolong and wasting
life with wandering between.
Soon Levites waded in the Jordan
once again, and among a youthful brood
graying, there Joshua and I stood
alone, surviving brothers and faithless fathers
who fell, bumping the sand like grasshoppers.

Filed in Poetry ♣ Tags: Poem