In the Miklat

CLICK HERE TO HEAR AUTHOR READ

for Kelp

I'm not in the miklat;

but I imagine

if I were in Jerusalem

with you,

I'd have my guitar

and you'd have yours.

Or if there was no time

because the alert

went off again at 3am,

and we dragged ourselves

down in pjs and slippers,

we'd at least

have our blues harps.

While we waited

for the all clear

we'd fill the silence

with Dylan and Cohen,

between tunes

debate

who was the better songwriter.

I'd tell you Dylan was a poser,

always wearing

someone else's costume,

while Cohen dug deep

into the darkness

of his own

emotional rubble.

When we got tired of that

I'd pull out

my bilingual copy

of Shirei Ahava

and we'd read aloud —

you first in Hebrew,

me next,

from the facing page

in English —

all the biblical allusions

lost in translation,

(hiding inside the words,

as it were),

milot miklat,

you'd joke alliteratively—

words of shelter

from the storm.

We'd listen

for the boom of a strike

above our heads

the crash of collapse,

and wonder

if ZAKA

had already been 

dispatched.