It's that time of year again

when we speak of how we used to be strangers

and in the midst of lip service paid

to plagues and lamb's blood and the arc of history bending

towards Abraham Joshua Heschel

and Martin Luther King

your face is a fresh cut blade of grass,

and its green smell makes me feel alive

on a fresh spring day, midmorning

my stomach aflutter for summertime.

From your vantage point

alone above mountaintops

the rest of us are tiny dots beneath your magnitude,

you can hear the still small voice,

same as Eliyahu,

who I hope comes to fill his empty chair this year

and drink down his cup which

as a little girl

I stared at through the whole seder

to see if the liquid had moved one inch.

I've been waiting all my life.

I've been waiting for you to follow him.

In the land of Egypt,

a jar of real life preserves

pops open like a crocus.

My hands were weak from pushing and pulling

my thumbs are sore from pressing down.

I was tempted to break it open,

because the taste of ground glass

mixed with its sugary contents

seemed preferable to 

the dry on my tongue.

That jar and I were alone like

Jesus and Lucifer

in a barren place,

like the scragglers

of the people Israel

destined to wander patiently

and wait for risk to strike them

while others raced ahead.

And suddenly...

A young man blossoms in Cairo,

and another sprouts in Irvine,

there's a young woman who crops up in New Orleans,

they try to choke her but her message polinates everything,

another blooms at Brandeis,

and one more, younger than my little cousin,

bleeds for a garden in Bengazi,

In Tel Aviv, lefty fringe dorks

who don't represent the Israeli public

plant more seeds in the yard 

of the American ambassador!

Can you believe these upstarts?

In Bil'in, a brother is welcomed home after too many years,

the shackles release with a sweet click,

a tiny twist that changes everything.

There are paper wishes lodged into the places

where stray flowers should grow;

Hearts in need of water and light

in the deepest underground places,

where a story cannot even reach.

I won't forget thee, oh Jerusalem,

but let my people's right hand forget 

about white phosphorous,

about dashing

anyone's little ones against a rock,

about waiting on nerves frayed as fringe

for the one who will rise against us,

about unleavened promises

in exchange for spoils

and riches given from trembling hands

of a Jewish generation guided by primal fear.

Let them wander for another year. 

Next year, where to?