Footsteps of Dancing Giants

My illustrated Bible primer, I recall,

showed Moses cowed before a great unholy wall

of water, thrown up as one might a Persian rug,

a salivating oh-so-living sea, frozen

in frothing abeyance of malice over the heads of God’s chosen

tribe; thus Zion was raised, the graves of Gaza dug.

But what’s that to a boy of ten who rode in a whale

and built an ark and tamed a lion all in a day?

Invincible in flannel shorts and with mother near

I tacked and gybed about the knees of dancing giants,

doughty as David strutting through Gath with his flaccid appliance

slung from his belt and Goliath’s titan head on a spear.

So small again so soon; some years are strangers, others

visit like nest-flown children; memories, like that of my mother’s

worried frown, for instance, haunt like infidelities.

And if I cried like a newborn the titans rushing by to their clients

wouldn’t take my hand like I would have when I was a giant

and they were only children at my dancing knees.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet