Photo by Edward Cohen.

Between us
is only the wind -

Outside your childhood bedroom
In the ruins of Akko
On the dusty cosmopolitan hilltops -

So much I wish I could say
for the thanks I feel for you,
How far I’ve had to come
to sit for a few moments in your home
listening to the breeze of the coming rain storm
through the wooden window scaffolds.

Lifting her sleeve as if
imparting ancient
sad secrets,
before me lay raw
her pride and pain,

The endurance of a woman
patient for her child, and
her bleak hope
for a family.

Photo by Edward Cohen.

Photo by Edward Cohen.

Slight gray tabby cat
descending the fire escape -
a timely feat,

With no particular remorse
would he express
the fate of all the rest.

Tonight
I am quietly wishing
for that night four years past
you appeared
to me
in a dream,

How it felt to wake
like slowly parting
from a lukewarm bath,

And asking
with all the bleak hope of my heart
to have it back.

Each night the buddha requests you
to turn your restless soul
towards its own humble concerns,

The clean shaven
transplant suburban monk
of central New Jersey.

Photo by Edward Cohen.

Deep in a wood of pines
he labors through stale dawn
her arrival possessing his mind
unaware of Fates withdrawn,

The silence stretches out of range
as pause of hand brings lonesome pain
this little machine he builds all day
to shield his soul from her delay.