Genesis

The Daughters of Lot

You lived in a wicked city
Perhaps you were born there
Perhaps you were not
Perhaps you were teenagers
Perhaps you were in your forties
No one knows your names for sure.

Your uncle’s God destroyed your home
Perhaps your friends were dead
And maybe their children,
That you used to baby-sit.

And man did not seem to possess the capability to destroy cities yet
And so you could not doubt the cause
Your uncle’s God.

Did your father love your uncle’s God?
Did he on the day his home was destroyed
and his wife (your mother)
was turned to salt?

He begged the angels to let you all go to that town
But then he was too afraid to live there
And so you
(the three of you)
went up to the hills
(which is where your dad was told to go in the first place)
and you lived in a cave.

Did you think that that valley was only the beginning?
Did you think the whole world was being destroyed,
One city at a time?
Did you miss your mother?

How did you cope?
How did you attempt to comfort each other?
Did your father lose his mind?
How could you have not?

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Genesis Chapter Ten

Nimrod built some cities
Two that stand out in faded memory
Babel and Ninevah
And now his name is an insult.

History has a way
of being slowly forgotten
and what was once believed
is often relegated to myth.

When the waters receded
and the three sons had their children
it led to a legacy
one that Noah likely never intended…
but here we are.

Does this mean we did not learn from the flood?
Did we, in arrogance on fire,
choose our paths to lead us where
our own hearts dark desires
would plunge the world back to the void…?

What did God think?
about Nimrod?
What do we think,
about God?

Genesis Chapter Nine

A reckoning for life blood
Man and beast
it all seems so fair
and unforgiving
I think of all the sins
That I have not felt resolved
And wonder where I would be,
if I got what I deserved.

Remember naked and unashamed?
Yeah, I wasn’t there either
but nine chapters in
and we already have a mid-east crisis.
Cursed
for what?
It doesn’t seem fair…
perhaps I’m missing something.
Don’t you often feel like you are missing something?

Genesis Chapter Eight

“But God remembered Noah,”
Will He remember me?
Noah was a righteous man…
where does that leave me?
The waters receded then
But now they have reached my neck
The animals were released then
But this dog is on its chain.

If I wait for forty days,
will a window open wide?
Will it even crack for me?
Or will I drown at sea?

I have no dove
I have no birds
Nothing to release
Nothing to go on ahead…

It’s been a lot more than six hundred years
And here I am today…
You saved your servant from the flood,
will you save me now?

Genesis Chapter Seven

“And all flesh died…”
How beautiful a thought
But do I equivocate?
Or is the metaphor meant?
Were there screaming children?
Banging on the side
of the boat
as the waters rose?
Everyone was sealed in,
Animals and people too,
as the waters rose.
One Hundred Fifty days
No one can tread water that long.
Everyone was dead
All flesh really died,
except Noah
and his family.

Wickedness has in itself
its own punishment
And perhaps that is why it is so labeled.
But wickedness
it spreads
it is dark
and insidious
and it infects everything around it
though we often don’t see it
for years,
or at all.

Forty days and forty nights
that is a long time to rain
The whole place covered
As the water began to rise
The water often rises
in our lives
so it goes.