God in the Cave

By Avi Killip

Rashbi found God
in the lonely dark
by speaking words of Torah
in his sanctuary cave.

Hiding from the Romans
like a refugee pilgrim
while his wife mourned
absent husband and son

who’d fled for their lives
and found spaciousness
for study without bounds,
endless echoes bouncing

off walls while the miraculous
carob tree and spring
nourished forsaken bodies
buried to their necks

(except in prayer
when they’d don their shirts
and bow their heads
to a divine protector).

Twelve years safe
in their cocoon of learning
severed from the mess
of the outside world.

Like hungry birds
they open wide for wisdom
and spirit and grasp it
sparks, flying between 

electric insights, glow
with divine radiant splendor.
Hidden secrets revealed
only to these, only here.

Of course, they hallucinate
divine chariot of Elijah
come to set them free
and so they leave with

fire-eyes that burn.
Farmer, tractor, plow
go up in smoke, ash,
until God can’t abide

so much destruction
and pain. In fanatic chase
of the world to come
he has lost this one.

And now he must
return to the cave
this time not for his
safety but for ours.