Flight into Egypt

Jeanie Sanders

November 19, 2023

In the middle of a war when you are

told to leave the home of your ancestors

and travel South, do you know the direction?

Rubble from your former life is everywhere.

It mixes with the dust and the smell of bodies

rotting under collapsed buildings.

The Sun, that old reliable navigation instrument,

is obscured by the clouds of dust and particles

from others who are running through what seems 

to be your yesterdays.

Everyone cries, everyone prays, 

everyone carries a child close to their heart.

And where is this magic place of safety 

you have been promised? Or the road

that will provide protection?

It is nowhere 

  and yet you place your feet

   one after another as though 

    you are in a dance.

       Or a race with a finishing line that keeps 

           moving 

               farther 

                  and farther 

                      away.

Jeanie Sanders is a poet and collage artist. She lives in Lytle, Texas. Her poems have been published in The Texas Observer, San Antonio Express-News, Texas Poetry Calendar, Passager, La Voz de Esperanza, and several anthologies. She has two books of poetry, The Book of the Dead: Poems and Photographs and The Dispossessed.