Devil's Pursuit

Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.

Sobbing, she
fled from her persecutor, tears
pouring down her cheeks, and her
tow-headed, fearful little child she
tugged along by his little hand.
But the devil, eyes glowing, rage
clouding his molten, igneous
countenance, pursued her, he
chased after her in thunder and
blind fury.

But the great wings of a white
eagle were given to her in her need.
And so, wrapping the child in her arms,
she rose up in powerful flight and flew
long time deep into the wilderness
of sand and cactus and secret, rocky
caves. Here she received manna, and
honey, and fresh water from the
clear stream of a hidden brook.
For a while she stayed here, taking
comfort, and in the days that followed,
her child grew happy again, and so,
therefore, did she.

But the wroth of the devil
did not abate; his hate waxed, and he
unhinged his jaw and stretched wide
his iron lips, and out of this issued
a deluge of fire across the edge
of the desert, which he could not enter.
Tides of flame poured forth: his malice,
his hatred, his evil, and his requirement
for vengeance on the one whom he
did not love, but could only scorn.

From the entrance to her secret cave
she saw the flames coming, and then
she was afraid. Sending the boy
to the back of the cave, she
gazed out, fearful of the end. But then
fissures shook the earth before her feet,
and a deep rift split open below
the mouth of the rocky blade which
housed the cave. Therein spilt the flood
of flame, and the devil's deluge
rushed down into it and was carried away,
and she saw it no more.

Seeing this was done, the devil's
hatred compounded, but turning away
at last from his fruitless pursuit he
departed, preparing to make
unjust war upon uncounted other
unsuspecting victims.