the approaching

Exodus 3 

did you see it first in the
chorus of beating wings
taking flight, far off in the
gleam of
a dusty pink sky,
the horizon flat and undulating,
insisting
you were here, alive,
dust and soil caked in your toenails,
your weathered hand gripping a rough shorn staff? 

and then, perhaps, did you
sniff the air
once, maybe twice?

something had changed;
something was changing—

the roaring within you couldn’t be
quelled,
every heartbeat too, too loud
the goosebumps tingling up your arms
insisting
you open your eyes 

and there, far off, so faint
you possibly almost missed it: 

a glow—not the twinkle of
the stars you knew from gazing,
but the dangerous kind,
the kind that
insisted
you pay attention
and fall, headlong,
into the mystery of it all.