A Poem Inspired by Ezekiel 1:1-3
In the thirtieth year,
when the weight of memory had settled like dust
on the shoulders of the weary,
and the days passed slowly
like reeds bending beside quiet water,
I sat among the displaced.
We were far from the hills of our fathers.
Far from the courts where songs once rose
with the smoke of morning offerings.
Far from the gates where elders spoke wisdom
beneath the shade of ancient stones.
The river moved beside us,
broad and indifferent,
carrying reflections of a sky
that seemed too vast for grief.
We had come here with chains on our history,
with questions we did not know how to ask,
with the echo of ruined walls
still ringing in our bones.
The wind wandered through the reeds
as if searching for something lost.
Children played in the mud along the banks,
unaware that the ground beneath them
was not the soil of promise.
Old men stared at the current,
as though somewhere in its endless passing
Jerusalem might return to them.
And I, son of a priest
whose hands once knew the weight of sacred vessels,
sat among them.
My inheritance was memory.
Not the temple courts I had imagined walking,
not the white-robed service of holy days,
not the rising of incense in golden bowls.
Instead—
muddy water, foreign towers,
and the language of conquerors
carved into the air like iron.
Yet something stirred
in the silence of that exile.
The sky, which had seemed closed like a sealed door,
began to tremble.
Clouds gathered in slow procession,
dark as mountains moving across the heavens.
The wind changed its voice,
no longer wandering
but calling.
The river paused in its murmuring.
Even the reeds leaned inward.
Then the heavens opened.
Not with thunder alone,
nor with the terror of storm,
but with a vision that burned brighter
than memory.
Light broke through the clouds
like fire hidden inside amber,
like glory wrapped in flame.
And in that moment
I understood something the captors did not know:
The Holy One had not remained
behind the fallen walls.
He had not been trapped in cedar halls
or golden chambers.
The presence that once filled the temple
was not bound by stone.
It moved.
It followed.
It found us
even here.
Beside a foreign river,
among broken hopes
and unfinished prayers.
There the word came.
Not as a whisper from the past
but as a living flame.
It fell upon me
like rain upon dry ground.
The hand of the Lord
rested upon a man
who had believed himself forgotten.
And the exile
became a doorway.
For the voice that formed mountains
had crossed every distance.
The glory that once filled Jerusalem
had traveled farther than armies.
And by the waters of Babylon,
where sorrow had made its dwelling,
He spoke.
So the river continued to flow,
carrying away our tears
toward seas we would never see.
But above it
the heavens remained open.
And I knew then
that no land is too distant
for the voice of God.
No captivity too deep
for vision.
No silence too long
for the word to return.
For even in exile,
even beside a river not our own,
the heavens
can open.
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