Poem: "The Stories That Feed Us"
"…and in the place where the cloud settled
… there the people of Israel encamped.” Numbers 9:17b
The rain has hung upon this hill all afternoon.
From time to time a flash sizzles and stirs
the roiling black belly of clouds
to remind me something about scale.
And I think they knew this, too,
there among those mountains north
of knowing, there where starving
grew as real as miracles and
the honey of rock-nesting bees.
They knew they were small
like bees, like pebbles, like dust.
They came to know a cloud as something personal,
something linking them with past and promise.
This hill has upon it now a drenching
that though it forbids my ascent,
will feed garden and family
all summer through
and with luck we’ll remember all that feeds us:
milk and honey,
loaves and fishes,
tomatoes and sweet corn,
last year’s stories, this year’s hope.
Source: Marc Harshman, Rock & Sling (Winter 2010).
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