Threnody on a Parting of the Waters

Threnody on a Parting of the Waters

And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea

The wind blown waters parted
and the Red Sea turned upside down.
Sucked into this watery vortex,
birds hurtled  from sheltering clouds,
serrated pallid bill and feathered brown carapace
entwined with black pinioned hood
and narrow blood scarlet beak,
white-eyed gull and brown booby fallen as one
 in a fragile unpremeditated sacrifice.
Striped angel fish flew high into the troubled air,
whirling and dancing in a crazy spiral.
Piebald manta rays soared and shimmered into the sky,
and like ragged broken parachutes
fluttered gently down onto hard spiked coral,
stranded now by the primordial waves
retreating across the shallow ocean floor.

Along this path of feather, blood and bone,
went the Israelites full of hope,
going to Canaan, the land of milk and honey
long promised by their Lord.
No psalms of lamentation were sung
for the passing of  brown booby and angel fish,
manta ray and white-eyed gull,
no mourning for the creatures of water and air -
secret victims of an ineffable power,
or of the vagaries of a mighty storm.
In the reed beds only the wind sighed,
while the dark clouds of a moonless night
stripped outer space of every shadow,
and with these weeping veils overhung the stars. 
Silent flutes played a Lux aeterna for them,
and thus they were remembered. 
                                                                  Naomi