'Ark'

Reflection based on the women in the story... 
Exodus 1:8-2:10 

'Ark'
They placed the tiny cargo 

into the makeshift ark, 

pushed it out 

past the reeds 

hoping for salvation. 

No saccharine story 

filled with  

happily paired animals, 

no cheerful snatches of 

‘Arky, arky’. 

But perhaps, 

in its own distinctive way 

this, too, was a story 

of new beginnings: 

a reset. 

Mercy 

moved the midwives, 
not ambition; 

It was never about 

making a name for themselves 

in the larger story 

of a people 

and their god… 

Even so,  

the story lifts them above 

the nameless Pharoah: 

Shiphrah and Puah 

live on, 

named and righteous. 

  

Odd, how the ‘cull’ order 

seemed only to see 

an increase 

in the Hebrew birth-rate. 
If it was subversive, 

an act of resistance  

against state-sanctioned slaughter  

of innocents, 

so be it… 

‘The women give birth quickly, Sire,’ 

they lie 

to the old man on the throne, 

even as his daughter 

draws out 

the river-child 

from the basket that will bear his name, 

and takes him home.  
               c. Nik 2023

*'Ark' - from the Heb. תֵּבָה, tevah; 'box, or 'basket' - used only twice, the other reference: in the story of Noah. Both arks, in different ways, vessels built with the purpose of saving life.
n.b. the name 'Moses' sounds like the Hebrew for 'draw out'.