Summer Evening in the Jerusalem Mountains

An empty soda can on a rock lit by the last rays of the sun. The child throws stones at it, the can falls, the stone falls, the sun goes down. Among things that go down and fall, I look like one that rises, a latter-day Newton who cancels the laws of nature. My penis like a pine cone closed on many cells of seed.

I hear the children playing. Wild grapes too are children and children's children. The voices too are sons and great-grandsons of voices forever lost in their joy.

Here in these mountains, hope belongs to the landscape like the water holes. Even the ones with no water still belong to the landscape like hope.

So I open my mouth and sing into the world. I have a mouth, the world doesn't. It has to use mine if it wants to sing into me. I am equal to the world, more than equal.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Sep/Oct 1996
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