Above the crater
By Kaila Shabat
A direct hit!
Their home demolished
by a barrage of rockets
launched at their sleepy town
in central Israel. Amid the ruins
neighbors offer solace.
Indeed, no graveside elegies ensue
from this violent onslaught
but the content of their lives –
their tangible history – is buried
in the swirling dust of the crater
that was their home.
Papa's paintings are effaced
from the living-room walls;
Grandma's tomes of Yiddish poetry
surely lost their shot at posterity.
Manuscripts skim cyber-space
but what of the work in progress?
Grandchildren will never romp
in the nursery they fixed up for them;
wiped out, too, is the attic room,
a shrine to their son, who fell in Gaza.
Past and future embedded in the debris,
but where will they lay their heads tonight?
Nothing remains of the lush lawn;
a single fruit clings to a broken bough,
survivor of the lemon tree's abundance.
Even the turtledoves have deserted.
their personal Garden of Eden, now obliterated from the face of the earth.