A poem - Andrea Bucher-McAdams

THE PYRAMIDS AT GIZA 

     By Andrea Bucher-McAdams 
  
Thus spake the Teacher: 
  “It is our burial practices that separate us from the apes.” 
  I gaze at 
  The triple-breasted goddess of the Nile, 
  Encased in her Madonna spike-bra: 
  Rigid, rigid with age, 
  While a camel spits 
  And the sun blazes on. 
  I climb 
  Stone by stone - 
  Stones that the Hebrews quarried, 
  Stones that are stained with 
  What? 
  And a woman next to me murmurs: 
  “Can you believe 
  That Moses gave all of this up!” 
  I laugh. 
  But he did - 
  Kneeling before a thicket 
  That burned 
  With transcendent fire. 
  The breasts of the goddess 
  No longer suckle the Pharoahs; 
  The Princes curl in her womb no more. 
  Her flesh is cracked sirocco sand 
  And dogs piss on her leg. 
  It is not our burial mounds - 
  Our pyramids of death - 
  That separate us from the apes. 
  It is the flame touching our lips, 
  The Ra that we capture 
  In hand-painted urns, 
  In words, 
  In our visions of the Eternal,   In dreams that break into 
  The tomb - 
  That force open the sarcophagi - 
  That cause the poison-asp 
  To uncoil 
  And slither away. 

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