Abraham

A still small voice in the wind
like a throat torn open
a distant voice,
a promise made in the absence of flesh.

A sign 
cut by the signifier
Facets reflecting generations
Born by heat and pressure

Cleave flesh and faith
Cleave faith and flesh 

Look at him. Unmade,
his body like dried fruit, his wife a barren, unplowed field.
What seed could root in fired clay?

Standing at the maw of infinity,
not pleading, not bartering,
Listening.

The stars are bruises against the black,
numberless, reckless in their burning,
and God
God who does not stutter
whispers: Count them.

Oh.

the great joke of faith,
the foolish laughter of the unfed womb,
the crumbling tendon, the decades devoured.

Her doubt
slick like warm fat 
couldn’t be clawed back 
after leaving her lips

And yet he does not stagger.
He does not bend the word into something softer.
He does not call the grave a cradle.

No.
He lifts the knife.
He walks up the hill.
He stands over the son who is flesh of his own unbelief.

But he does not stumble.
He does not gnaw at the edges of reason.
He does not flinch at the promise
that floats like spores in the air.

Heaven does not blink.
The silence does not waver.
Immute righteousness descends-
Imputed,
sharper than forbearance.
Firm. Resolute. 

Blood:
fluid that cures
and sets upon sin’s multitude 

This is faith.
This is the terror of belief.

This is the spilling of seed into the void
That finds its muted earth
Rooting, finding, binding
And then setting the captives free

Not the warmth of a candle,
not the muted hand of assurance
but the bones of a man waiting to die,
laughing at the sky
because it is already written.

Scribed by poets who scrawl 
With dragging feet on parchment’s path
Wet with Jordan’s waters mixed
with milk and honey.

Rolled up and dropped in pottery-
waiting for a Shepherd to come.