A wall divides our summer from yours.
If you give me a knife I will draw you a map, all of it yellow—
Summer makes no promises and the drive through the Jordan valley is fever after fever. Everything is burning.
The window tells a story that the mouth cannot– it has two sides
one side tells an ugly story the other side tells an ugly story they think is beautiful, or the equivalent, worth telling.
A white line through the valley was once a pipe. And here the remains of a Roman bath.
A man walks in the distance, his sheep in tow. He doesn’t see us.
In the evening we eat a shoulder of lamb. Someone points to a spot in the sky, a corner of darkness, and hollers.
Somewhere far away they hear his cry and think it’s an animal. They grab their knife.
We use our knife to carve the meat they killed with their knife.
A different animal.
When we swim in the lake when the winds are high
we die a sudden death—
tomorrow the radio will report a terrible accident
But for now while we are still alive
we dip our heads and move further north.
