The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived. But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
Exodus 14:22-31
The flag
She holds him so he doesn't fall
or climb on the old man's head.
Who, meekly, surrenders to him.
The baby marvels at his bald head,
the first one he sees, at his smell, which, besides age,
has incense in it.
He marvels at his words,
no less wondrous
and undecipherable
than his smell.
Everything is new. Everything
is important. Everything
is the only thing, a shooting star, a blowing
dandelion,
in baby's eyes.
In his myopic fingers, in his velvety, moist
mouth.
How can anyone not surrender to him,
how can anyone resist to be
the center of things,
even only for a second?
To be prolonged by his wonderment,
to be pushed, like a feather, upward
in time
not enough to be saved, but enough to prolong
the fall?
Overwhelmed, the baby releases himself, coloring
the whole drawing.
____
from Exercises in Mythic imagination, December 2024