The mist of grace moving covered the grey mountain
The man and flock there walked the desert path
A core of light erupting colored its layered edges
Then gazing looked beyond his shepherd’s staff
The brimming high place in braw heavenly plenum
As dust upon the mountain drifting light
Finely floating facets raining gold upon its face
So parched his thirsty lips and hindered sight
The cradle of the most-high so crowned with mottled sky
He looked upon the peak so seeming far
A soft and breathing storm soaring on the broken stone
A thousand steps upon that jagged hearth
In blood and orange flight bled on that rugged flet
And sensed upon that hill a burning beam
A tree there filled with wonder with tears of fire wept
Upon its leaves frightening holy gleam
Saffron flayed upon a ledge a soaring flame then leapt
He turned aside his path toward the light
And swift a desolate still swept the darkening sky
A voice then spoke unto his heart with sound
As angelic light was trapped at length in earthly tree
The man then hid his face from sacred sight
Shining as the sun’s beam in silent beauty seen
For on that place he stood was holy ground.
©2026 R.A.R. Knight
Author’s Note:
The poem is an interlaced or alternating alliterative and rhyming pentameter retelling of the Burning Bush theophany (Moses on Horeb). The poem shifts between a global, elevated vantage and a personal, embodied vantage without switching from the third person narration.
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