four poems about my year in Israel
Up Top Above Adumim
Out of the blue sky newer
than anything in this place the light
whitens lips and eyes:
your eyes behind glasses,
your head against my breasts,
the flowers nodding
like drunks in Jerusalem-
Jews dancing,
kneeling, sunflowers
at the side of the road.
Cypresses dark and curved as commas.
Monstrous hills with springs at their feet.
The sun comes down
to the wadi, bends its head,
& waits for the parched pools to fill.
----------
Negba, Number 8
With a hand on your back I feel your wiry life
tied in its cords of muscle and bone.
The good light comes through the blinds.
I lift your hand: outside the window, cranes
begin to lift up earth.
In every park, a memorial:
On calves hot as candles you run from me swiftly
and stretch with thin shoulders to get back the ball
you've lost in the cypress,
so red, like a flower.
The birds you've disturbed
shoot high, getting higher,
curling big circles into the light.
---
3.
In rows, tail-to-tail, peacocks and their children
march under stars
gorged fat as mosquitoes.
Orion stares with his absent mouth open
and we stare back.
In the good storehouse of my soul
I am taking you in, small hands and curls.
The heat makes us blush,
fresh water and fig smells.
An old tank is buried, rusting, in the hill.
From its mouth spill white branches
covered in flowers.
The lights of Jordan
in the heat-hazed air waver,
like a curtain to be parted.
Your hands in the small light
of the lampposts are cupped up,
ready to catch rain
that isn't going to come.
---
Atzma'ut/Zikaron
Memorial Day:
The siren comes on in a kibbutz graveyard
filled with the neat graves of its young sons.
A startled yattering of birds:
a cloud lifts off into the neighboring fields.
Cows and dogs bay from cramped throats.
All eyes are lowered. Hands clasped at backs.
Independence Day:
Jets fly in formation over Jerusalem.
Blooms of smoke from charcoal in the parks.
Hot blue, hot white, carnival colors.
We walk until the dusk
sets in, the desert chill returns.
The coffee houses open again.
We clasp hands,
wipe our mouths.
The stray cats under the jasmine
cry out coarse songs of greeting.