MOSES DOWNED TOOLS

I should explain the phrase "downed tools", it refers to workers striking, they withdraw their labour, put down the tools they use in their work. 

INDUSTRIAL ACTION

Moses downed tools,

and before the management capitulated,

things turned very nasty.

Frogs fell from the sky alive

and children died.

Imagine that:

children died.

Could you pray to a deity

that valued one child’s life over another?

This poem wrote itself quickly. As did this next poem. Actually they arrived as a pair. 

ON THE ROAD TO JERICHO

On the road to Jericho

we bitched about the gig,

hunted out mouthpieces

long unused and dusty.

On the road to Jericho

we raked over old grudges,

squabbled about the set list.

Unspoken fears every step of the way.

By the second tune

we knew the notes to play,

the size of the walls no longer mattered.

That last day, the seventh,

almost made the previous forty years make sense.

What can we say about the walls of Jericho being broken down by Joshua's trumpets? I focussed on the life of the musicians and their supposed forty years in the wilderness. I am often inspired by stories from the Bible although I would not class myself a believer as I am a pantheist. God is truly all around us.

Here's the late Leonard Cohen with If It Be Your Will.

Until next time.