Poem for Peace in the Middle East

It’s a beautiful sunny morning here in Easthampton. The birds are singing and the daffodils are blooming. Soon I will make toast and eggs for breakfast. Earlier when my dog woke me up to take her out, the sky was just turning from black to a bright greenish blue in the east and one robin was trilling a mellifluous aria. 

My heart is heavy with ache and sadness at the latest round of military funding my government is sending to the Israeli government as they enact their unconscionable and horrific campaign against Palestinian humans in Gaza. No one with a heart and an open mind can actually, literally believe this war is only against the unconscionable and horrific acts of Hamas. The starving and orphaned children, the targeted aid workers, the families displaced with nowhere to go… it’s sickening. The holocaust by the Nazi government in Europe against Jewish people and other “undesirables” less than 100 years ago was also sickening, unconscionable, horrific. 

I heard a Jewish acquaintance reiterate recently that Israel is the place they knew they could go if everything else fell apart. And yet I also heard a Jewish friend affirm recently that her experience when she visited Israel was that Palestinians are forced to live in a system of apartheid even when there’s not an active war going on. 

This grim cycle of violence churns throughout history and casts a long shadow on the future. 

I feel like I’ve done all I can do. I called my representative. I sent emails and signed petitions for a ceasefire. I spoke twice at my city council meeting in support of the ceasefire resolution that recently passed and was sent to our Massachusetts congresspeople and to the U.S. president. At the invitation of a poet friend, I wrote a poem about the world I would like to see, instead of this one where my tax dollars fund bombs that destroy innocent people’s lives, families, and culture. 

The thought of writing something to speak to this moment of genocide in Palestine was overwhelming to me, so for guidance I thought about a positive memory of cross-cultural connection and, in terms of form, I took as a model another poem I wrote about encountering folks with whom I could barely communicate but who were guided by a sense of basic goodwill. 

Dove of Peace by Pablo Picasso

This is the poem I wrote about the type of world I’d like to see more of. 

Daybreak at the Red Sea

On the bus from Cairo 

to Dahab, we crossed

the Sinai peninsula, stopped

in the black night

at a roadside shack.

Bare bulbs illumined tables of food. 

Out back

was the real desert

& a sky rich with stars.

Mom said, If you don’t know 

the word, just smile and point.

In the cafeteria

my first semester at college

we were

Muslim, Jewish, Christian,

Hindu, lesbian, bisexual

all eating tater tots

& sharing. Unlike

elsewhere, our singularities

didn’t divide us.

Dad said, Every soldier is someone’s 

cousin. I will not fight them.

At the guesthouse

a deck of cards was enough

to make friends.