Tablets: Take One
Photo by Lucas Dial on Unsplash
A poem by Patty Seyburn
I am in charge of the other ark,
the one that holds the broken
tablets. We carry it behind
the great ark – by behind I mean
way behind, at nation’s end,
after the stragglers. You will not
hear my name, but I was once
part of the conversation – who
will keep the other ark safe,
who will ensure the fractured
tablets reach our destination?
I did not mean to raise my hand.
I did raise my hand. After I spoke
with Moses, he said, God wants
to talk to you. You want to know
how God sounds? Like sand and
sky in conversation, not music
or speech but both. Some nights
I open the ark to check the tablets.
They are the original stones,
from a quarry you will never find,
engraved with God’s finger.
On each shard, a word or two.
“Remember” and “honor”
and several pieces with “not.”
One with “no other.” What to do
with broken words of God?
We could not just leave them.
I look back at the desert. Moses
sometimes comes back to walk
with me. I think he feels guilty.
I say, don’t be so hard on yourself.
He smiles. When that man
smiles, the sun takes a vacation.
Patty Seyburn is a writer of poems and professor at California State University Long Beach. Her captivating style plunges readers into inquisitive passions and she views poetry as a vehicle to embrace the struggle of faith.
Read Threshold Delivery, Perfecta, Hilarity, Mechanical Cluster, or Diasporadic today.
Patty Seyburn has previously published five collections of poems: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019); Perfecta (What Books Press, Glass Table Collective, 2014); Hilarity, (New Issues Press, 2009), Mechanical Cluster (Ohio State University Press, 2002) and Diasporadic (Helicon Nine Editions, 1998). She earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is a professor at California State University, Long Beach.
