A broken tulip

“Noah’s end – drunk, dishevelled, an embarrassment to his children – eloquently tells us that if you save yourself while doing nothing to save the world, you do not even save yourself… When it comes to rebuilding the ruins of catastrophe, you do not wait for permission. You take the risk and walk ahead. Faith is more than obedience. It is the courage to create.” – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Noah is a silent man.

He builds an ark for 120 years
covers it with pitch,
watches the world be damned and life drowned,
floats into survival
obeys everything to the cautious letter
drowns himself in drink,
bestows curses instead of blessings
turns birth sons into slaves and not rulers. A slave

woman who knows the Creation story
and the story of long ago God
undoing all he called good,
letting the sky fall in
and water like a wall crawl up,
loosening distinction into chaos,
saving only a few,

this woman sees/babies/thrown
into water/to drown/she screams

she sees her baby and she calls him good like God did the world
and she gathers him into a basket and tars it.
She doesn’t have one-hundred-and-twenty-years and three-strong-sons,
only one hurried week
and one quiet daughter
and there is no promise,
God has not said that she is any more righteous
than any other mother parting from any other child
but she rebuilds the story because surely,
what floated once to save a world could float again to save one baby
she must fight for life
waters are coming so weave a basket so float your baby so God is silent so name your child good so argue with fate for this one life so take a slave

let him be a ruler.
Let him never be silent.
Let his words spill up to challenge heaven itself into justice let him
fight, every day of one-hundred-and-twenty-years
for the salvation of the world
and the drawing of many, many people
through the waters.

The basket floats away.

Featured image by @nervum.