Of Bones

A valley:
Dark and deep
And hidden in the vestiges of time;
Reserved in shadows for when time is done
Forbidden, dry and bleak and white,
Beyond the hallows of the ancient sun;
Rest place of the reaper’s blade
Of bones

Jacob’s death
Lies old and silent there
Beneath the ceaseless, sunless light of doom
And cries:
Blood-red and dry and dusty tears
For hope cut off, and perished
Beneath a pogrom’s
Snowy moon

Scattered blood,
Herod’s wrath:
Flung red across the frosty morning grass
And Rachel, for her children weeps,
Beneath the crooked cross of Auschwitz
And through the many bones
Old, and dry
Scattered through the valley’s depth

But, even through the stillness
Softly comes
A northern wind,
And stronger, then, from heaven:
A rustling of bones, like autumn’s leaves
A promise, old
And long forgotten
Stirs the gloomy depths

Then rise
In sacred wonder;
The many scattered souls
Across the dusty valley floor
Join bone-to-bone;
Through the shadowed trace of time
A promise not forgotten:
Jacob, He shall make for you a home