Esteban (3) (cont’d)
But why should he feel
so lost, so much more a wanderer
now, with the destination fixed?
As castaways, their goal had never been
any more certain than rescue.
Like Moses & Aaron returning
from the mountain for
the first time, before the exodus,
with a directive that seemed
so straightforward, so just.
The tribes all so tractable–even joyous.
The cane of power still slight enough
to fit comfortably in the hand.
No plagues in sight.
Toward the end of it they start hearing
about seven cities. By then
they’ve become almost acclimated to
the miraculous–the dead returning
to life, the chronically ill
rising from their mats, the possessed
regaining their wits–
so they’re hardly surprised that the No-
Place of the balladeers should lie
just over the next chain of mountains,
guarding the heart of La Florida,
the not-yet-deflowered land.
But they draw back, turn south
despite Esteban’s pleas.
Refusing to enter what sounds like
a new Canaan without reinforcements:
the same shrinking
that condemned the Hebrews to forty
years in the desert. Cursed
to follow their dwindling herds
until every last rebel was zeroed out
& the waters of rebirth
could once more part–but only
for those born in the wilderness.
Even though the majority probably
never wanted to revolt.
Like Esteban, perhaps,
they’d nowhere else to go,
no other prospect.
__________
La Florida: then applied vaguely to the entire mainland north of the Caribbean. Native and European notions of utopia (literally, “no-place”) cross-pollinated in the imaginations of many of the conquistadors. In the widespread Indian conception, the flower-strewn land that greeted the souls of the dead was always just over the next set of hills.
the waters of rebirth: Israel’s final exit from the wilderness required the miraculous parting of the Jordan, echoing the parting of Reed Sea in flight from the Egyptian army forty years earlier.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Cibola 1
- Cibola 2
- Cibola 3
- Cibola 4
- Cibola 5
- Cibola 6
- Cibola 7
- Cibola 8
- Cibola 9
- Cibola 10
- Cibola 11
- Cibola 12
- Cibola 13
- Cibola 14
- Cibola 15
- Cibola 16
- Cibola 17
- Cibola 18
- Cibola 19
- Cibola 20
- Cibola 21
- Cibola 22
- Cibola 23
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- Cibola 25
- Cibola 26
- Cibola 27
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- Cibola 30
- Cibola 31
- Cibola 32
- Cibola 33
- Cibola 34
- Cibola 35
- Cibola 36
- Cibola 37
- Cibola 62
- Cibola 38
- Cibola 40
- Cibola 41
- Cibola 42
- Cibola 43
- Cibola 44
- Cibola 45
- Cibola 46
- Cibola 47
- Cibola 48
- Cibola 49
- Cibola 50
- Cibola 51
- Cibola 52
- Cibola 53
- Cibola 54
- Cibola 55
- Cibola 56
- Cibola 57
- Cibola 58
- Cibola 59
- Cibola 60
- Cibola 61
- Cibola 63
- Cibola 64
- Cibola 65
- Cibola 66
- Cibola 67
- Cibola 68
- Cibola 69
- Cibola 70
- Cibola 71
- Cibola 72
- Cibola 73
- Cibola 74
- Cibola 75
- Cibola 76