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Still More Poems
This Land of Stones
I remember being little and gathering stones,
Picking them from between the rows of my fathers olives.
My fathers have called this land the promised land,
A promised land of stones.
Palestine is stone,
I am stone,
There are stones in my bed
My shoes
And my feet are like rocks.
The row I tend, I tend from stones
The earth pushes up a
Harvest of rock.
" the stones are from Gehenna," my gradfather would tell me,
"All the is evil and that is hard in man eventully rises."
I was ten when my grandfather came home from the hospital.
I stared at the gall stone in the jar,
Wondering what evil hardended within my grandfather.
I look at Jerusalem, and there is weeping.
A young Jew is crying stones
A young Arab is crying stones
The army officers are crying stones
Jerusalem is crying stones.
An old Arab is running from the Temple of the Rock,
Blood running down its steps
Men pick up furious stones
The army fires back
And stones fall from the sky.
Moses raises his staff and plauges are visted upon isreal,
The plague of stones.
Moses laid stones at the Jordon and now Ishmeal’s sons
Throw them into Hebron.
This land of stones
She is weeping
For the stone hears of her sons.
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Dominga Corazon
In the mountains they found her,
brass lodged in her brow.
Her bones told of her suffering,
the rosary her brother gave her for her wedding
hanging from her white jaw bone,
the white crystal beads in place of her teeth
that were felled by the butt of a rifle,
and Jesus on the cross watching her rape.
Death is easy but the road to dying is long.
The brass fragments pulled from her scull, part of a bullet.
The bullet from the rifle of an army officer
who crushed her face,
he, who leaves her to bleed.
The officer has two children.
He comes home from the mountains
bringing them gifts.
His daughter loves ribbons,
his son guns.
And the sins of the fathers shall be passed down unto the third generation.
They sit to dinner and say grace.
And the family of Domiga Corazon
cry for their sister
as Jesus looks down from his cross.
Flamingos
I stand behind her
Running a comb through
Her wet hair
She reaches slowly back
For my face and
I move forward to meet her hand
Her touch is filled with a velocity of memories
There are warm winds that circulate
Through my body
That originate in her finger tips
Invisible
Currents that course over days and nights
Lifting moments
that are cast out into bird filled deltas.
I pull the comb through her hair
And the pink plastic flamingos in the front yard
Fly away
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