On Horeb
by Hannah Herrera
ON HOREB
A poetic reimagining of Elijah’s experience on the mount of God
I find myself here
on the mountaintop,
my bones valley weary.
I asked to die;
you said it wasn’t time.
You led me
into the
wasteland,
a chaste
man,
the only one
in the whole
Negev.
At your command,
I dried up the skies,
cried,
Leave behind your Asherah and your Baal!
I begged your breath into a dying child;
I piled twelve stones,
summoned fire
from your throne.
At your demand,
I pleaded relief for the land.
Look!
A little cloud
like a man’s hand
rising from the sea.
They answered me:
O troubler of Israel, why have you come?
They tried to seize me,
to slay me,
to lay me among their dead.
I fled.
I know I must recall
how you fed me
with your black-winged hand,
how the widow’s flour
gave food to us all.
But still I wonder,
Oh Adonai,
will you provide?
I teeter on the peak,
the mount of my God.
Will you meet me here
on this hallowed ground?
Will you pass by,
throw commandments down from on high?
Make my face shine?
From the sky streams
a rushing like the flight of a thousand birds.
All around,
blowing, breaking, cracking.
The rocks are tearing,
the stones are smashing.
Your breath is breathing
this mountain
into the ground.
The earth gives way,
quivering, shaking;
the ground heaving;
the crags crashing;
the surface splitting.
Heat.
Blinding, bathing heat
pouring from the heavens,
roaring,
scorching, surging, swirling.
A sacred fury;
a sacred, silent fury.
Sudden stillness,
a hush.
Air as quiet as death.
Then a faint trill of the wind,
a soft sigh of the air,
a gentle murmur of the breeze.
I cover my face.
My God is here.
His whisper is enough.
HANNAH HERRERA
Hannah Herrera is a freelance journalist and editor with a passion for creative nonfiction. She has dabbled in poetry for years and enjoys trying to form a written dance of meaning and sounds. She currently lives in Colombia, South America, with her husband, David. For more of her writing, follow her at @ourwovenworlds on Instagram and Facebook.