Holy Land

God gave this land to me, one says. 

The land is mine, another.  Their too-close

stories jostle to root in the same soil. 

Lines are scratched to separate the people

of one story from the other – Green Line,

Blue Line; Area A, B, and C; H1 and H2.  

The stories get shouted.  Rocks

rockets and reprisals follow.  The lines

harden into concrete walls capped

with barbed wire. 

Bah!  What do I know of lines? 

I am the land, hurled into the cosmos

eight billion years before Genesis. 

What I know is that fire is hot and burns

the hair of Marwa; that rounds at rifle

speed catch and cripple Mohammad;

that Ayat’s 18-year old arms and legs

become missiles when she pulls

the cord at her waist.  What I know

is that the blood of children

doesn’t nourish the branch 
of even one olive tree.

Unresolved

Jackhammer, smartest, whiz, IBM
machine on legs, applauded
by Senators, Presidents, me.

An acolyte, ambiguous
about our mission, I wanted
hard-eyed insight, wire-
rimmed command,
rationality – emotion no
substitute for reason.
Just five months after
I arrived, you left me
to discover what you knew already.

When you knew and didn’t say –
was it loyalty? The unified front?
Influencing from the inside?
Did you hope digging deeper,
one final jackhammer
would break through?
Fired,
did you wince with terrible
irony when the tunnels spewed
their wrath on us?

That’s when I began to get it,
our losing.
Doubting,
I stayed, my analyses
piling up – spending higher,
backpacked supplies unstoppable,
database filling with bodies.

Much later, in remembrance,
you said we got it wrong,
terribly wrong.
You probed for lessons which
I studied wondering
if eleven lessons
were enough?

I think
you were not a computer.
No machine weeps
into office curtains, walks disheveled
past the posts of power, loves
the son who protests
his dad’s war.

Still
our faces reflect
on that dark wall.

Conversation

Empty now, chairs still circle
where afternoon voices flowed
with the chocolate conversation
of old friends.
A gap remains
where the too-bright sun set,
and no one could look at it directly,
like conversation about the lost child.
Chairs need rightful places,
the gap will disappear
then. Not yet,
what was said, lingers
in the leaves and morning dew.