Bread From the Earth

Not by bread alone,
but by eggplant and bok choy,

Not bread alone,
but by radish, pepper, chili,

Not bread alone,
but scorching sumac,

Stretching savannah,
Aspen that quake,

Not bread alone,
but by October clouds
set upon an eternal emerald sky.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Stork Dropped Us

That night we slept over at the home of distant cousins, Shifra and Alfred Appel. By then our luggage had been found and delivered. Shifra was not sure that she wanted us sticking around for long. Patty sensing her reticence, suggested that we her give her the Nina Ricci perfume that had been bestowed upon us by Air France as "first class passengers".  After receiving our token gift, Shifra  mellowed out a bit, but not much. She woke us up at 6:00 am the next morning. The Israeli sun was already creeping through our curtains. "If you're gonna find a kibbutz that will take you girls in, you'd better hit the downtown offices first thing in the morning." she said. The first kibbutznick flatly refused us."There's no way that we can take responsibility for a 14 year old girl." he said tersely. We were sent on our way. We traipsed from one office to the next that morning - all sang the same tune. Finally, I remembered a youth movement from when I...
Read more

The Stork Dropped Us

That night, we slept with distant cousins, lost our luggage en route to Tel Aviv. Shifra wasn't terribly glad to see us. We gave her Nina Ricci from Air France. "Best hit the road as soon as sun is up," Shifra says. "Start interviewing early." First kibbutznick will not have my sister, "Too young, too much responsibility." Next agrees to take her; he's a Communist. "Fine, even a girl of fourteen can work." Orders Egged driver to drop us at Sde Yoav. "Never heard of it, my friend," the driver shrugs. "Cross the road from Negba, you know Negba." By a weepy willow, he drops us off. We trudge down a long dusty trail. With little fanfare, they put us to clearing a field, bending, tossing rocks of all sizes into a pile. As I bend down yet again, I see before me a flapping of wings. A stork has opened her beak and dropped us down on this God forsaken plot of earth. For three days, we toil under the hot sun. Watery blisters sp...
Read more

A Call From Aunt Becky

I often ask myself why my mother ever told me about the call that she received one winter morning from Aunt Becky.  Aunt Becky wasn't actually my aunt, she was Bonnie's mother. Bonnie was my friend who lived across the street.  I'd known her since I was four years old. We'd played jacks together on her wooden bedroom floor. I'd wait for her while she practiced the piano, and I'd wait for her while she finished dipping her last Nabisco wafer into her glass of milk, so that we could walk to kindergarten together. Now Bonnie and I were in fifth grade. Aunt Becky said that she didn't know if she should actually tell my mother about it, but then she felt that it would be better if she did. The girls had been over at Bonnie's yesterday and she'd overheard  them talking about me. Actually, they were discussing a number of girls, and when they came to me, they decided that they didn't want me in their club. And she'd overheard one girl say, "Oow...
Read more