Waiting for Canaan

Pioneer wagons travel down snowy trail

by Bobby Aldridge

 

(choka)

 

Ants building sand hills

Making bricks without straw

Follow well used paths

 

From the cattle in Goshen

To the veil in Sinai

 

Destroying Angel

Leave my child in my arms

Lead balls through barn boards

 

Can the mill be safe refuge,

Our lamb’s blood on the woodwork?

 

Our exodus lit

Crossing the frozen river

As the temple burns

 

Our homes buried in the land

So many temples leveled

 

Frozen or parted

We cross only to wander

And gather manna

 

Leaving Prairie Saints

And fair-weather friends behind

 

Taking counsel here

In the veiled mountain tops

Holy of Holies

 

A basket in bulrushes

A Conestoga wagon

 

A generation

Has passed in the wilderness

Jordan’s river parts

 

Locusts sleep beneath the earth

Shed their shells and spread their wings

 

Carry twelve round stones

Stack them here upon the shore

En memoriam

 

Fallen brethren and tables

From amid our affliction

 

Home is the sailor

Home from the sea … the hunter

Left along the way

 

See the honey bee building

A hive in a hollow tree

 

Christopher D. Cunningham is the managing editor for Public Square Magazine and contributor to Third Hour. He loves emphatically celebrating the normal healthy development of his sons Albus and Whitman, writing about the Church of Jesus Christ, finding the middle ground on most controversies, and using Western Family generic brand lip balm. Christopher is a proud graduate of Brigham Young University-Idaho, and a resident of San Antonio, Texas.