Scrambling to safety on the other side of the Red Sea

by Rachel Ann Russell 

After, it was such a grand celebration:

dancing, singing, campfires, and

Moses and Miriam standing tall

while outside the celebration,

in the darkness,

nothing.

In the midst of everyone’s joy

I stayed quiet, not unlikely for an old man

and after all it wasn’t my fault,

it just happened the way it happened

But it was my footstep, I was that

person, the last person, stepping up the bank,

my breathing heavy, and a young man

shouted “Grab my hand, Rabbi.”

I’m not a Rabbi, just an old man

who just made a million bricks maybe.

And my foot was the last to leave the riverbank

and the waters closed in after that,

drowning them, horse and rider,

a noise of crashing waves, of screaming horses

of clanging metal, of men dying.

Sometimes

in the dark, in this dry land,

I hear the watery screams still.

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Rachel Ann Russell has earned a Master of Arts at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and has taken classes at The Writer’s Center. Her special place is where art turns into joy and church. She has been most recently published, among other places, in the Maryland Literary Review, Time of Singing, Christian Courier, and Hearts of Flesh Literary Journal. She blogs at https://rrussell10.wordpress.com/.