Brother Solomon
By Yael Haran, Israel
I am my beloved and my beloved is mine…
As I brush the wheel
Of this sand-caked machine.
Into the wilderness, my brother,
clutching the neck of your best friend,
the bottle you will abandon,
like a broken child.
We pass Bedouin whose bastion
is the brilliant sky:
bigger than us.
Yes, deeper to the Dead Sea.
Two children then in Brittany,
Filling buckets with infinite sand:
then it was good, then good.
The ocean sublime and still;
Soft winds vibrate through the
Skeletons of who we are.
Spilt wine on the bonnet,
Dead thing in the sand,
Flies and mountainous holiness.
Two kids burying themselves with spades:
then it was good, then good.
We drive to the earth’s lowest space,
Where breath parts revealing
Your beauty a labyrinth of pain;
Wordless, bewildered,
I make a star on your treasure chest,
suffusing azure, healing waves:
The restoration of one you forgot, yourself.
You put an arm on me,
noble, worried warrior and slave…
Like in the garden with Rufus the dog
And Easter bonnets:
Then it was good, then good.
The pebbles we pocket here,
Richer than financial figurines;
The desert wind louder than the reddest
of wines, and more alive.
Healing, we cannot fix it,
Only blend with its force;
And trust its ways are more
mysterious than miracles of mountains:
Beyond our grasp, moving through laws
of invincible formation.
Go forward, lonely spirit,
My beloved,
with feet twinned with earth.
Release the rage in frozen places where
tears fear to flow.
Move on, through dreads of freedom.
Don’t look back, God said (softly in your ear),
Lest you become
a pillar of salt.