War In Israel

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for KS

On a rainy day in late December

two old Jews talking

over tepid bowls of kosher chicken soup

(we are nothing if not clichés) 

my friend across the table

says he's had enough,

decided with his Canadian wife

the time had come 

to decamp permanently 

to Israel, 

says as someone born 

in the South Bronx

even after 40 years 

he's never felt completely

at home in Toronto:

And what better time to leave?

With a war going on,

a grandchild on the way,

and the elective hemorrhoid surgery

finally behind him.

I feel jealous.

And maybe it's cause 

like my dad, I was born

in Montreal and the place

has a certain strange hold on us.

There's a mural of Leonard

20-stories high on Crescent

that you can see from inside

the Musée des Beaux Arts,

the top of Mt-Royal,

or when you stumble out of a bar 

at midnight from the street

Cohen's face glowing over the sacred city

like stained glass.

A few days ago

they threw Molotov cocktails

at a synagogue door and

shots were fired at a yeshiva

because of the war in Israel.

Between slurps, my friend says,

you can't always choose your battles,

but sometimes you can choose

where to fight them.