"The Pharaoh of My Past"  

EXODUS POEMS by DOUG TANOURY

CONTENTS (links to individual poems)

"Up on Sinai"
"Molten Calf"
"Blue & Purple & Scarlet Stuff"
"Cherubim Skillfully Worked"
"A Slave's Life"
"Burnt Offering"
"Favor In My Sight"
"The Red Sea Between Us"
"The Pharaoh of My Past"
"The Finger Of God"
"My Brother Aaron"
"The Moses Soliloquy"

I was enslaved
In the Egypt of you
By one whose heart
Was hard like a brick
And whose will was my burden
 
And how I have come
To be free is a story of a journey
Through a desert
Across a sea
And up the tallest mountain
 
I was your slave
And a victim of a will so harsh
It would not bend before
The voice of God
Until He took your son
 
So this song celebrates
And these words now sing
To Pharos's dead son
Who bought my freedom
And freed me from the Egypt of you

"The Finger Of God"  

EXODUS POEMS by DOUG TANOURY

CONTENTS (links to individual poems)

"Up on Sinai"
"Molten Calf"
"Blue & Purple & Scarlet Stuff"
"Cherubim Skillfully Worked"
"A Slave's Life"
"Burnt Offering"
"Favor In My Sight"
"The Red Sea Between Us"
"The Pharaoh of My Past"
"The Finger Of God"
"My Brother Aaron"
"The Moses Soliloquy"

And the two tablets
Scribed with the law and
Written by the finger of God
His word captured in the stone
Were cast down and broken
At the mountain's base
 
And I am moved
By a message from God
Shattered and in pieces at our feet
Of covenants unkept and
Testaments unmet here
In the shadow of Sinai
 
And I have not seen God's face
Only his finger as he wrote
His presence fire on the mountain
A flickering and a flame
That melts an icy heart
In the company of the Lord

"My Brother Aaron" 

EXODUS POEMS by DOUG TANOURY

CONTENTS (links to individual poems)

"Up on Sinai"
"Molten Calf"
"Blue & Purple & Scarlet Stuff"
"Cherubim Skillfully Worked"
"A Slave's Life"
"Burnt Offering"
"Favor In My Sight"
"The Red Sea Between Us"
"The Pharaoh of My Past"
"The Finger Of God"
"My Brother Aaron"
"The Moses Soliloquy"

His voice is the sound of the river
Bubbling white over the rocks
And his manner is graceful and
His ways gentle

"The Moses Soliloquy"

EXODUS POEMS by DOUG TANOURY

CONTENTS (links to individual poems)

"Up on Sinai"
"Molten Calf"
"Blue & Purple & Scarlet Stuff"
"Cherubim Skillfully Worked"
"A Slave's Life"
"Burnt Offering"
"Favor In My Sight"
"The Red Sea Between Us"
"The Pharaoh of My Past"
"The Finger Of God"
"My Brother Aaron"
"The Moses Soliloquy"

And it began in the wilderness
With a voice calling out to me in the night
Calling me by name from a bramble
For that is all that grows there
It was as if it was consumed in flame
For it was lighting the darkness

And I have come to know the voice
As the Lord I Am who charged me
And laid this mission on me
To lead the tribes of his people Israel
But I was afraid and told him so
To let him find another but he would not

I am changed somehow by this task
I no longer am the man I once was
But somehow I am uplifted
By the tasks the lord has asked
As if I have climbed a lofty mountain
And have left the normal world

I am transformed by what I do
And no longer watch the flocks
In the night and no longer do
The bidding of Pharaoh and his court and
For all the wonders the Lord has done
This change is the most miraculous

For what I am has asked I have done
When his said extend your hand
My hand was extended and
When he said raise your rod
It was raised and Pharaoh and his
Magicians were confounded

As I now am confounded by
The workings of my God
Who rains meat for our pots
And grows bread for our table
And pours water from the dry
Stone of the desert at my command.


-Doug Tanoury 5-25-01