Backward Mutters

This is Day Two’s Poetry Pub prompt for the November Poem a Day Challenge. It is based on 2 Samuel 6:6 and 1 Samuel 6:7. You may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

We are sympathetic to Uzzah
Whose impromptu hand it seems 
Took hold of the ark of the Lord
When the oxen stumbled
And the ark careened
Towards the ditch on the road from Baale-judah
It was being carried, which too 
May have been impromptu,
But we read that the cart was “new.”
 
And this is where it all falls apart.
The new cart was a work of art:
A Philistine-imagined invention,
A way to be delivered from
The constant Intervention
Of The Presence 
Who would just not leave well-enough alone,
Who would not leave idols standing
Leave out of sight the boiling tumors of sin:
The ugly which hides below the surface of the skin.
Instead, God drug out into the open:
Goiters of greed, pride’s pustules broken.
And so, they sent The God home,
Pulled by oxen on a “new cart.”
 
And Uzzah’s laying hold of the Ark?
It was the impromptu, habituated act
Of years of repetitive practice—
Living like one could move the Lord here
Or have him show up there,
Living like God needs my help,
Needs my holding back,
Thinking that with the right tools 
I can in fact, manufacture grace,
Keep him who breaks out, in place,
And god-help-us,
From playing the fool.

(c) Randall Edwards 2023
Artwork: Giulio Quaglio the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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