When sirens shake the city's calm,
we descend three flights, grandkids in arm,
to join our neighbors in the basement shelter;
imagine rockets climbing the Judean hills
will pull us from this life like bodies from rubble.
In the crowded shelter, parents stand
and calmly talk along the walls. Children
in pajamas playing, some barefoot
on the cold cement, claim the center space.
Older siblings hold the very young.
When the time is almost up, some restless
boys have made a game of jumping,
seeing who can touch the ceiling--
pretend they’re intercepting missiles,
crushing our fears with their bare hands.

for Maureen Kushner, on the yahrzeit of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, zt”l

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Our van winds through the narrow streets

and splits the crowds that choke the way.

The Arab children after school seek shortcuts

past the Jewish plots–whole sections overrun

with broken stones. Windshield grating,

front and rear, guards against large rocks

that can be hurled at passing cars.

We are targets in our own land.

It is the day before Tu b’Shevat,

a season of renewal, a time of growth—

the first flowers bloom in the city below.

When we find the Arab caretaker, he leads us

to the gravesite and asks for too much money,

but we don’t bargain with our dead before us.

Like Abraham for Machpelah, we pay full price.

He scrubs the stone with brush and water.

More Arab boys pass through the lane.

An old woman and her daughter appear

in the section next to where we stand

reciting Psalms. In his year in the earth

her husband has prepared a place

for their eternal home. She says it feels

more like home than Brooklyn.

Returning to our van, we meet a group

on foot breathing hard. Alarmed

there’s been a new attack, the road

exposed below, we gird ourselves

for a hail of rocks on our descent.

In this season of our freedom,
we remember how the Nile
 
red with blood once flowed
and how the strength of
 
Egypt ebbed until its host
drowned in the Sea of Reeds.
 
Again the river is a floating grave:
bloated fish and hippos,
 
carcasses of crocs: another plague
upon a house forever cursed.
 
The cry, We are all dead men,
again rising through the land