Passage 15.
I am Jebel Musa.
Another night of pilgrims
trudges up me at 2 A. M.,
their time. My time
impinges upon eternity.
Burning bush, stuttering
Israelite, the Ten
Commandments, smashed tablets,
a divine re-do.
“Panorama” is the call
herding Abdul’s people
in the darkness.
“Camel, camel” pesters
another bedouin
hoping for some baksheesh.
I hear Arabic, French,
English, Mandarin, Greek.
Their speakers are thirsty
and lean toward the little
tea houses spread out like
glowworms along my sides.
Woven woolen couches
invite them to linger.
“Tea- -Five Egyptian Pounds!”
They pay and sip and rest.
“Hand, hand,” pleads a wiry
bedouin who holds a hiker’s hand
on the 750 stone steps
beyond the last camels.
That American looks old and winded,
so why the “ No thanks,”
as he wrenches his hand free?
At my summit
Moses saw Elohim.
He is not like the fire,
not like the thunder,
not like the earthquake.
He is like the tiny whisper
Elijah heard.
A mosque and a little
Greek Orthodox church squat
on the terrifying
and intimate immensity.
I hear 80 pilgrims
chattering and clicking
away and shivering.
Happy Italians are singing
at the end of their trek.
I don’t engineer
the next moment,
only witness it.
The dusty, orange sun peeps
above the serrated peaks.
It is always the same–
everyone goes silent.
Holy.
I am happy to be
the shoulder of God.