Usually I don’t mind when someone who lives in another country complains I’m not loyal enough because I question the government or believe in friendship with all neighbors, but today some guy really got me angry when he criticized my choice of friends and I let this barrage emerge.  it’s not quite a poem, but…it’s a bit of me.

Figures of Zionism

Lets start with the financial records –

I pay thirty percent of my salary to the government

if we include VAT, which is on everything, even the berries

I can’t afford.  And then
we give another few percent to charity,

mostly cancer and culture.
I don’t mind any of it.

I don’t even consider what I would have made

if I had continued working in the U.S.A.  or even

if I had brought my husband to earn a fortune there.

I do think of my kids –

spending their good years in the army –

when my American friends

were sending their offspring to good schools.

I think of the weekends of laundry

wondering how to get out those stains

of mud and blood and terrifying sweat.

I think of my sons-in-law and my nephews

and how they disappear for days into places

we can only read about weeks later,

my one-eyed husband assigned to spot rockets,

while his family shivered in shelters.

I think of my college friend, living alone on the border,

with her books in the safe room to keep her mind off

what she could do with her walker if someone came in.

I think of how I injured my back running down to the shelter

with a child in my arms and another holding on.

I think of my widowed friends, the gaps in all of our lives,

and I wonder who can say I have not committed to this
country.