poetry

AT HOME

Some people hire gardeners to care for their house plants.

They see them as decorations to suit their interior design.

And indeed the flowers and plants enhance my regard

For the residents and their superb taste in gardeners.

I don’t have anything like a green thumb, and sometimes

They die on me, those plants, just at the time

When I thought I had done everything right by them.

Yesterday I separated a plant (whose name I don’t know

But I know she’s female) from her children.  We relocated

The children outside to a place where the air conditioner drips

From the neighbors’ apartments into the ground.  I hope

They won’t be homesick.  The mother seems lonely

So I sit by her and talk, and I’ve given her a name – Shirley.

I hope it helps because I really want her to blossom again.

 

may 10, 2021 – house plant Read Post »

blog, my life in tel aviv,

The tree in front of our living room window suffered a lot in the past years – all these guys who work for the municipality got the wrong information and cut off the wrong branch, then a tractor plowed into it, and then it started flowering and shedding leaves at the same time.  I never thought it would live through the heat waves we’ve been having, the rainstorms, the manhandling, but today I suddenly noticed it has grown much taller, and almost reaches my window.  It is as if it knows I love it, and it wants to please me so much it will adapt to all the circumstances, all the punishments it’s been enduring.

Our window flowers and plants, however, are not doing as well.   I can almost hear them saying “I don’t have to take this abuse,” as they disappear overnight.  We were getting enormous quantities of cherry tomatoes for months, but now there is nothing left.  Peppers too.  And all the stuff we replanted from the garden at the entrance of our building rebelled as well.  Even though we kept the plants in the shade, the unusually hot desert winds and the changes from day to day don’t agree with them.

or maybe they are just echoing what is in my heart.

 

may 9, 2021 – heat waves and window plants Read Post »

israeli politics, poetry

Yehuda Amichai
ON THE DAY OF ATONEMENT
On the Day of Atonement in 1967
I put on my festive dark suit and went to the Old City in Jerusalem.
I stood for a long time before the alcove shop of an Arab
not far from the Damascus Gate, a store
of buttons and zippers and spools
of multicolor threads and snaps and buckles.
A splendid multi-colored light, like an open Holy Ark.
I told him in my heart that my father too
had just such a shop of threads and buttons.
I explained to him in my heart of all the decades
and the events and the reasons I am now here,
and my father’s shop is burned up there and he is buried here.
When I finished it was the hour of Ne’ila.
He too pulled down the shutter and locked the gate
And I returned home with all the worshippers
 
*Ne’ila is the final prayer of the Day of Atonement, when the gates to heaven are locked as the fates of all have been sealed.
 
tonight is an evening about Amichai on Jerusalem.  For the link press here.
 

may 9, 2021 – Amichai on jerusalem Read Post »

israeli politics

The inevitable chaos is here – it was always going to be about Temple Mount.  It was always about the mosque built over the temple.  holy for both religions.  And tomorrow is Jerusalem Day.  A day for a city that could be the best place in the world, a  city I once loved but have avoided whenever possible for the past four decades.  And now it is the city that will – as a poet. Rina Ribalow, once wrote – “break my heart.”

 

 

 

 

 

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may 8, 2021 – chaos Read Post »

israeli politics

There are so many things going on right now it is impossible to choose.  Some are still on Zoom – some are live – some are just published.  Concerts, athletic games, plays, even parties.  More are safe but some seem a little beyond safe.  We met Rachel for a drink on the beach the other evening

All these opportunities have become confusing.  I bought tickets for a concert, and an opera, and a play and then started thinking – what do I really want to see.  What do I really want to do with my time?  Oh dear, I’ve become used to staying at home and watching stupid series.  And you?  

may 7, 2021 – Read Post »

israeli politics

the best article on what to wear I’ve ever read – and I’ve read a lot.

Now that we’re leaving home we think a lot about what to wear, and I look into my closet and don’t know what to throw out.  Not only because I don’t know what the styles will be but I don’t know what I will be doing, how hot it will get, whether I will be with others… or what.  The idea of another generation like the post-pandemic post-war roaring 20’s is fascinating, but how much further can we go?

 

may 6, 2021 – what to wear Read Post »

israeli politics

Pressure, yes.  I don’t know anyone who follows the news – they say it’s too painful, so they stay away.  From my first time in Israel I learned that no one ever missed the news.  It was turned up loud in the bus, in the grocery, every hour.  Even if we were deep in a conversation, we stopped for the news. We knew that our fate depended on it.  

It’s different now.  Our inability to really understand what is going on makes the news painful without being informative.  Why are we being told what we are told?  Is it true?  Is it slanted?  Is it shaped by the government, by some advertisers, by attention-seekers?  Is it meant to scare us? comfort us? deceive us?  Perhaps it is better to avoid the news, feel no pain.

but what is really going on?  makes you nervous, doesn’t it?

 

may 6, 2021 – feeling no pain Read Post »