In the Between

A poem

We were having a nice chat, or actually, a spat.

Nothing we had not been doing for centuries.

I was beginning to wonder if this relationship was worth it.

It demanded so much effort, so many conditions.

What was I getting out of it? That day,

I think it was a Tuesday in March, you left

in a huff, making threats, or were they promises? Hard to tell.

I waited to hear back from you. Radio silence.

I gave it time.

Four hundred years.

Seriously? Where did the all the burning bushes go?

The chariots in the sky? Parting seas? Dry bones

rattling back to life, manna in the desert, talking donkeys?

You just folded up the heavens and went AWOL.

You left us, our children, our children’s children

stories instead of memories. Waiting for a promise.

Wondering if it had all been a dream

we could not purge from our hearts. We longed

for angels to wrestle, for ladders to heaven.

A promised land.

The years dragged on and on. Generations came and went.

Empires rose and empires fell

while we offered up the same old prayers and incense

until just another unremarkable Tuesday, maybe

also a morning in March, when a righteous old priest

named Zachariah entered the temple

and as if they’d never left,

the angels came roaring back.