For this week’s Poetry Aloud selection, I’ve again chosen an excerpt from my poem “Moses on Mount Pisgah,” one of the dramatic monologues — the first of 33 — in The Twelve-Gated City, a book-length work I’ve been working on for about two years and am now completing. In this poem, the speaker, Moses is a very old man, watching the children of Israel far below as they prepare, under Joshua’s leadership, to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses himself will die on that mountain, as he has not been permitted by the Lord to cross over. In this passage, he describes for Joshua the great appearance of God in his life, in the mysterious burning bush.

“Moses Under Burning Bush,” Claude Mellan.Public Domain.

Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. 2And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked…

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

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