The Intifada Begins

I was riding in the back of the truck
we were just five minutes from Gibor
David and I
we had made love in an orchard of lemon trees
and I was thinking just how lovely life could be in spite of everything
and I was looking at the hair on the back of David’s neck
how it curls upward like a stream running backward
in One Hundred Years of Solitude

we are like salmon too I guess
everyone of us
things like that were coming to mind and I was feeling safe
forgetting about the fighting
for a second
maybe that is why it happened
I forgot
to be watchful
that I carried
who “sitteth on the right hand of God the father almighty”*
the pistol

and I breathed in and noticed the sun in my eyes
and across the windshield
and then blood
on both of us
and the windshield too**

*from the The Apostle’s Creed
**This is an entirely fictional account of one of the events of the “Night of the Gliders” attack on an Israeli army camp two miles east of Kiryat Shmona, in November of 1987. After writing the poem, I found an article that mentioned that the driver was the woman soldier’s boyfriend, and she is referred to as Corporal Tami in the news article, although when I wrote the poem I just imagined such a relationship. A Syrian-based guerrilla group took responsibility for the attack.

Missing Michael

A tribute to our friend in Germany. :-)