Sidewalks crinkle from rainstorms

in Jersey, 

ridge between suburban valleys

and cave under flood-lines, 

like my Savta’s fingers

pruned from three generations 

of kneading dough 

and scrubbing baby scalps 

under the drip drip 

of a shower head

that never fully ceased its flow. 

 

This path darkens 

under trunk-form shadows 

like my Saba’s shoulders 

after tending to his lemon tree,

glistens like his watered eye

downcast, strolling home

from the neighborhood shul, 

Shabbat brimming his lashes. 

He carries his prayers 

to his wife’s dinner table. 

 

Cobbles weld in my under-sight,

eyes set on the stop sign 

at the end of the road.

Pebbles, silent and stable, 

and there, like sand from the yam

grinding my shoe’s laces, 

dragged into the sliding doors 

of Ben-Gurion, outbound. 

 

Is it a poem 

or a silver platter 

I feel in my back pocket

when the land grows still, 

the red eye of the sky 

slowly dimming over smoking frontiers?