Moses Displaced:

This desert will entomb me.

Each grain of sand will consume me;

A feast of decay, a burial by decree.

This desert will not let me escape.

It will hold me in its grasp

While in the sun my waters evaporate.

I have journeyed far and thought

I might see the promised land; see the green valley,

The swaying tree, the white-tipped river I have dreamt of

Winding between the shadows of the valley

I had imagined…

But now I know.

This desert is the end for me.

It whispers each evening; In the morning it sings

And the words are my unravelling—I will never leave.

This desert will be the home of my bones until my bones

Are desert too, unrecognizable even by the eyes of God,

Blown across the sands as sand themselves.

This desert undoes me, seeks to hold on to me, to bring me

into its rising and falling bosom and hug me eternally,

Drinking me into the expanse so uniform I will be forever displaced.