Must We Always Fight?

The portrait you painted

was of a wounded man,

his emaciated face, with cropped hair

stared at me

for weeks.

The figure is standing straight

facing me

but I walked away

with an image of a bent man;

he was not broken

but the dark, grayish

red that has become

your signature of late

haunts the canvass

like a shroud.

The marks on his body

seemed like gashes,

they were long and vertical,

and deliberate.

The scene reminded me

of a Fairuz song;

something about the eyes of a woman

being mightier than the sword.

And I wondered why

he was cut

every time you looked at him.

Strange that you could only

talk of the Giacometti feet;

how determined

and grounded they were...

I saw them tired,

naked and cold.

It would have been a beautiful picture,

if it wasn't for the pain.

Days on the Mountain

Last night

the face of the moon was ragged.

And I did not need to turn over

the remains of your Turkish coffee cup

this morning

to speak of the coming days;

Fortuna's lines were drawn

with the first sip.

The old water heater was making a sad

wailing noise

interrupted by silences,

as if lamenting a death

or the soft cry of an animal in pain.

You always told me to look

for the signs of the universe

everywhere

in the simplest of places.

It talks to us, you said,

and sometimes we can hear it

but the words take strange shapes,

like a spider on a wall,

or a piece of string

crawled up and twisted

lying innocently, on the floor.

Yesterday, there was a mild earthquake

and the couch I was sitting on

rocked, gently

back and forth.

At first, I thought it was my heart

trying to shake me back

into one repose, or another.

But it was a nod from earth;

an agreement of sorts..

Answer to a Shabbat Invitation

A pleasure, as always,

to break bread with you

The sea is calm

The sky is blue

We can talk of all things

big and small

India and China

even the wall

My concern is

to have enough time

to sing songs of praise

and remember a time

When a man stood tall

brave and sound

and another stood still

and later flew