All Our Exiles​

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The tree line thickens at the edge of the highway,
pines swallowing the dusk like a held breath.
Out here, the wilderness is not a map of ancient sand,
but the chill of November settling into the bone,
the damp rot of autumn leaves on wet asphalt.
We are all just walking out of Eden.

Eden was the porch light left on by our mothers,
the childhood yard where the borders were fences, not failures.
But the screen door clicks shut, and the woods begin.
I watch the tail-lights bleed into a long red river on the interstate,
a parted sea of commuters idling in the rain,
and I think of Moses.
Moses gripping a cold steering wheel,
forty years lost in the wilderness of the daily grind,
wondering if the Promised Land
is just a Friday evening with no emails and enough to pay the rent.
We are all just walking out of Eden.

The wilderness does not always look like an empty desert.
Sometimes it is the fluorescent hum of a hospital corridor,
where a tired man sits on a cracked vinyl chair like Job,
holding a styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee,
scraping at the ashes of bad news while the doctors speak in tongues.
Sometimes it is the midnight bus headed away from the city,
Jonah staring out through the rain-streaked glass,
running from a calling that feels too much like a heavy stone.

We carry the desert in our coat pockets.
We build an Ark out of late notices and unsaid apologies,
hammering the wood of our long days together,
hoping it will be enough to float when the floodwaters of Monday rise.

The wind shakes the last brittle leaves from the oak.
The season shifts without our permission,
indifferent to the grief we are trying to outrun.
I stand at the edge of the trees, listening to the frost harden the mud.
The woods do not ask for a map.
They only ask that you keep walking through them.

Maybe Jerusalem is not a glittering city of gold.
Maybe it is just a quiet kitchen,

snow falling against the windowpane,
a kettle boiling on the stove.
We are all just walking out of Eden,
looking for a place to finally take off our shoes.