Moriah

"[If] God should really speak to man, man could still never know that it was God speaking. It is quite impossible for man to apprehend the infinite by his senses, distinguish it from sensible being, and recognize it as such. But in some cases man can be sure that the voice he hears is not God's; for if the voice commands him to do something contrary to the moral law, then no matter how majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem to surpass the whole of nature, he must consider it an illusion."

--  Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798)

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I've sometimes wondered about that walk
down from Mount Moriah,
father and son, together.
What could have possibly passed for 
conversation between the two that day?
Idle banter?
Angry reproach?
Commonplace chitchat about the
clouds overhead looking something
like the family's beloved old camel,
or about the welcome scent of approaching rain,
or about the evening's chores awaiting them back home,
or about what it is that mother Sarah has fixed
for dinner that night?
Or did they say nothing, the two of them?
Did they just walk steadily downhill, returning home,
the fall of Abraham's scuffed sandals caressing lonely rocks
underfoot, and a gentle gust of wind
every now and then carrying birdsong
and the faraway plaintive cry of sheep?

What happened, I wonder?

And how did Isaac sleep that night, by the way?
Did he sleep that night?
And did that afternoon's events ever come up again
in conversation between the two of them?
"So...you know, Dad...about that one day...."
Or was it never breathed again, ever?
Did it die in Isaac's place
on the top of that dry, forlorn mountain?
Was it left there,
carried to faraway lands and times
by the breeze of angel's wings?

Of course, many scholars
(ever the cup of cold water)
apologize for destroying the myth
of Isaac being such a young child,
overturning the temples of legend
and colorful Sunday School felt-board figures
with the studied reality that he was probably,
in all likelihood
(given the parameters of the story, anyway),
a young man in his 20s.
A difficult day's worth of stubble
shadowing his gaunt cheeks, perhaps,
the muscles in his sculpted calves burning
from the morning's wild climb,
his man-voice gravelly with youthful self-confidence
and quiet wonderment of his ailing father's
obvious sad decline into
inevitable old age.

Maybe.
I suppose anything is possible.

But just for the sake of airy irrational stubbornness
against the hard ground of academia,
the occasional romantic in me
still wants to imagine the scene that day
somehow unfolding this way:

Let's imagine Isaac as that young boy.
Let's say 5 years old.
Imagine the little boy is tired, confused, scared--
not so much at the day's strangeness
but more at the simple fact that now,
on the silent walk down
the mountain toward home,
his father--stranger still--is trying to hide
the tears tunneling down his dirty cheeks
and into his stiff beard.
Isaac reaches his tiny 5-year old arms
up to his father, so tall--
too tired to walk another step, perhaps,
as little boys often are,
but more than that it is just a case this time
of a little boy wanting to be held by his father.
Wanting to feel his father's strong arms around him.
Wanting to bury his face
into his father's warm shoulder.
The smell of the man's sweat from the day,
sour, comforting, alive.
The taste of his father's salty tears
as the boy kisses the rough, bristled cheek.
Wanting to whisper to his father,
"It's okay. I forgive you...."

The little boy's legs dangling in the air
to the cadence of his father's assured steps below,
counting out time down the steps
of the mountainside,
the boy feeling, at last,
sleep falling over him,
creeping up on him,
comfortable and safe
hiding against his father's chest,
little boy's feet swaying, small and tender,
as he gives in to sleep, so trusting,
a hot, blistered sole resting
atop the sweat-stained haft
of a knife now holstered at his father's waist.