On
Carmel beach he saunters
where
turquoise meets the border,
His
arms outstretched
His
upturned palms
Seek
signals of a different order,
Eyes
the milky horizon line
For
signs of calmer water.
His
sullen self numb
to
the laughter of companions,
neither
one thing, the other or either,
Frei
nor Frum, Jew nor 'Goy,'
Mount
Hermon broods over Babylon.
Why
does he push the bar?
What
does his heart desire?
Brittle as bone char.
He's
out of sorts with the desalinated state,
Where
love finds it's expression
As
jealousy and hate, and the fine wine
Of
the purple line leaves a bitter after-taste.
Assassins
dispatch, contradictions confound,
tired
aspirations rake the frontiers flat.
What's
the itch he can't scratch?
Golan
Magic propaganda grates,
And
the Jesus Trail – for Christ's sake!
From
Haifa to Nice, Nice to Montone,
Where
his voice wormed it's way through
One
dark winter night stateless and lonely,
Somehow
he knew this was home.
Mornings of defeat, the
triumphs of the evening,
The ebb and flow of feeling set the tone,
Welling up of passion, advancing, retreating,
this lying down mute and alone.
Forging our agreements, fuelling our dispute,
exposing the raw rootless discontent -
The ebb and flow of feeling set the tone,
Welling up of passion, advancing, retreating,
this lying down mute and alone.
Forging our agreements, fuelling our dispute,
exposing the raw rootless discontent -
A
wound so sore it bleeds,
'Too
much', he says, 'don't touch, don't touch,
I
need you'.
In
Haifa now he rediscovers
His
life in the eye of the tempest,
He
has his lover and the love of his friends,
Boundaries,
edges, crises and endings. All this -
Why
swap high-security for uncertainty and risk?
He
calls from his confinement
Intimate
and cold, waves over verges
and
marches, across unbridgeable distances
In
space and time – a thousand miles
and
two decades if truth be told,
But
we are connected, fingers through fences,
at
the perimeter of his heart,
where
sentries forbid entry
to
his soul.
On
Carmel beach he wonders
What
would happen if next,
He
abandoned himself to the moment
Relinquished
his grip on the rest,
Let
limits slip and barriers lift,
He
types out a text
He
holds up his phone in his palm,
But
the signals adrift.
It's
no cause for alarm.
My
message is already clear,
For
now and whatever, for love and for honour,
“My
heart is a harbour
