Let us split atoms if not hairs.
The ABCs have already been
Split, as have the pithy proceeds
From our last venture together…
Is it any less a miracle when things
Merge together than when things
Split apart?
Of course not!
But in this natural-until-proven-innocent
Age of ours, where the purity of a newborn
Child can be diminished to a bacterial woops,
It may take a supernatural split to show how
Even the flow-and-ebb of things together really
Is as miraculous as…well, as miraculous as we
Make it!
Without miracles we would think everything was
Natural
Without nature we would think everything was
Miraculous
A true miracle is taking that which is natural and
Making it miraculous
It happened when
Pharaoh sent out
The people
Strange, almost miraculous,
For it would seem two total
Opposites attract here…
(Pharaoh: the epitome of exile;
Sent out: the epitome of freedom)
(Perhaps
An oxymoronic a statement
As “class act” – people with
Real class do not have to act
And people who do, generally
Do not have much real class…)
Ah, but this is true freedom:
There is a freedom, let us call
It Freedom Lite, a fat-free liberation
With fewer calories but also with much
Less taste: this freedom allows for one to
Be free today from the prisons of yesterday;
However, in this freedom there is no fat, no
Taste, the prisoner crawls away with what he
Came (which is really less than what he had),
Broken, angry, sad – the upright man that was
Replaced by the bent back that is… and the cell
Within which he spent an eternity remains as it
Was, a cell: hungrily awaiting its next victim…
Then there is a freedom, a true freedom, where
The prisoner leaves so much stronger than he came:
The warden himself, the epitome of all things cell-
Ular, the master of chain and shackle alone opens
The door, the bars themselves become symbols of
Freedom, the fences themselves become signs of
Exodus, the watchtowers and sirens themselves
Shout out that this here prisoner walks freely,
Proud, his head held high and his bags stuffed
To the brim with all the knowledge, all the riches
All the treasures, all the strengths he has taken
From the unhealthy cell that was to the healthiest
Of cells that is…
Egypt, in the beginning a place of confinement,
A place that would do anything to deny G-d’s
Existence, anything to believe that nature is not
Miraculous, anything to drown the cry of a soul
Ah, but now, today, Pharaoh the leader of this Egypt
Has sent out the people, the leader of exile himself has
Declared freedom…
The people did not leave quietly, decimated, ashamed,
Their souls intact but their bodies beaten and scarred:
No, they left with a boom and bang, the physical as
Complete as the spiritual, sent out by the physical,
Once it’s nemesis, itself: the entire universe knew they
Were leaving, a proud nation heading for Mount Sinai and
The Promised Land
When the body which imprisoned your soul is the one
To send you to freedom, you know you are truly free.
Mendel Jacobson is a writer, poet and journalist living in Brooklyn. His weekly poetry can be seen at jakeyology.blogspot.com
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.