| holly
jones
We took the 405 bus from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The tickets seemed too tiny to deliver us
into a city expanding with fragrance,
threats and sorrow;
tickets like left-over pieces of confetti,
white, disappointed little angels.
The landscape opened into
a woman
who had laid down in the sun to cry,
her dress dusty and torn from the ages,
her home, the suburbs of history
colored with blue and white ribbons
stained with Kiddush wine
and red scars of dispute.
At the Jerusalem station
there was a man
perched on top of a Coke machine,
his eyes a wild blue, shining from beneath
his curls and beige tzizith hanging down
into the sea of red light
cast from Western Civilization,
“Emunah, Emunah, Emunah,”
he chanted.
We entered the Old City
at Damascus Gate
where soldiers, barely out of boyhood,
stopped us to search our bags,
then send us through metal detectors
into the net of religion
where prayers fight for G-d’s favor,
“Allah Akbar”
“Baruk Ata Adonai”
“Our Father.”
As we found our way through
the casba
an open casket was being carried
atop a sea of men,
the lone widow walking behind
the procession of black,
the man in the coffin
looking serene
unbothered by the store front Arabs
trying to sell his pall bearers fake Roman coins
that had passed through a chicken the day before.
Café politicians
were sitting on verandas
arguing about the threat of peace
--the tearing of Jerusalem in two,
like ripping a page from history
in jagged halves,
loosing words, bullets, and protests.
We walked past the arguments,
crouching under their words
as the café air of Turkish coffee
filled with tension.
From the corner of my eye
I saw an Israeli military vehicle
with a star of David on the driver’s side
that, in its modern rendition,
looked more like a hazard sign
than the seal of a king.
At the Western Wall
women were lined up
in frenzied echelons
armed with complaints, tears, and
paper prayers rolled up thin
to slide into the ancient,
indifferent stones
their private requests.
The men on the left, separated,
taking a more pragmatic approach
to G-d
reading directly from prayer books,
their black coats, hats, and curls
glaring almost white
in the August sun.
Only the evenings in Jerusalem
quiet the soul
when all grows still
in the graying city of growing shadows
while behind the closed doors
of dinner time
prayers are uttered more softly
and all are tired
from the thought of peace
and its long journey
to inevitable failure.
attended the University of Colorado for two years as well
as the Naropa Institute where she studied under Allen Ginsberg,
Ken Kesey, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. She has a Master's Degree
from New York University. She has lived in Israel and Italy.
She teaches Literature at Woodward Academy in Atlanta.
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