NOT ALL THE FINGERS ON THE HAND
ARE THE SAME

Dark is Love
Dark is my keffiyah
wrapped around my head for warmth
on a cold April night,
sold for food for mothers and children
inside the war zone, occupied Palestine.
I walk into the livingroom
a fringe of light at the edge of the curtain.
On the couch Minerva gathers the dark
in her animal sleep.
For a moment I listen to these rooms
deep in quiet
not as the absence of noise
but as the dark of love.
Breathing earth.

Dark is Love.
Dark in her keffiyah.
My footsteps echo on stone
in the refugee camp Kalendia.
At the door of the stone hut
I kneel and enter dark.
Dark in weathered hands of Zaid's
88 year old aunt
who tells me
when I say some Jews want you to have your land-
Not all the fingers on the hand are the same.
Earth
who is not property
who is neither wealth nor poverty
who is not ownership
keeps breathing
keeps breath

Breeding dark where love nests.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

• GIFT •

I promise to plant
every gift you have given me
even those, especially those
I could not receive

I promise those bulbs a home
steady as dark earth wearing herself
beneath the heels of time trying
to sound through each timed explosion

that wild roar we watched silently
how it shook us up
those cold nights
first we thought-
they're testing again in Nevada

it came to me that night
your warm walls glowing
tiny creatures
wildly shaken from their beds
somewhere, sometime we would return them
to their homes I promise to plant

beneath earth's tried soles

each gift you have given me
their heels will light up the sky consume deadly heat
signal like the aurora borealis
will return each burned bloom to her most delicate fragrance
will keep steady as the wind
the final gift