Jeff Kyser | + Follow Poet |
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Drawn Out

Amram is a Levite;
He takes a Levite wife.
They have a little boy;
A tyrant king seeks his
    And every young boy’s life.

When he is three months old,
And can be hid no more,
His mother makes an ark
    of rushes.
With bitumen, pitch, 
    the ark,
    she waterproofs,
    she brushes.

She sets it out upon the water;
It comes to rest
    within the reeds
There, at the edge of the river,
The tyrant king’s young daughter
    sees his need.

And so she pulls him out,
The tyrant king’s young daughter.
She names him Moses,
    “Because,” she says,
    “I drew him from the water.”

The priest of Midian
Has seven lovely daughters.
They care for their sheep;
They come to draw water,
    Filling the troughs
    For their father’s flocks.

The shepherds come
To drive them away,
But the Egyptian, they suppose,
    Stands up
    And saves them,
    And waters their flocks,
    And with them stays.

Their father says,
    “Why are you home so soon?”

“An Egyptian delivered us
    Out of the hands
    Of the shepherds,
    Drew water for us,
    And watered the flock,
    And stayed with us.”

And so Moses stays with them.
And Jethro gives his daughter’s hand.
And Zipporah gives him a son, Gershom
    “for I have been
    a sojourner in a foreign land.”

And Moses becomes a shepherd,
Tending his father-in-law’s flocks.
And now, the shepherd delivers the flock
    Out of the hands
    Of the Egyptian tyrant king,
    Draws them out,
    Israel’s sons and daughters
    Through the Reed Sea’s waters.
In the wilderness,
    He waters the flock.

Copyright © Jeff Kyser | Year Posted 2022

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