The Field

                1.

Strangely, the pressure, or the sense of it, relents
Only when I cross into the Arab quarters,
As if pressure were the sole property of Jewish

Streets, houses, speech, the merest familiar gesture,
A good Shabbos, say, proffered and returned among
The usual strangers, or not-quite-neighbors,

I love this, and sometimes even, momentarily,
Am at home, which is not to say comfortable,
Comfort being something deliberately given

And received, not necessarily what is held
In mind, Shabbat mornings, streetside, a thin wedge
Of commonality, not quite enough for a meal,

Much less a conversation, nothing to assuage
Any kind of hunger, temper any kind of rage.

                2.

Perhaps I should, but I don’t count all the bus passages
Along watch towers, concertina wire, check points,
Unclimbable fences, I mean, simply, what happens,

Or does not happen, when I cross the Green Line,
Virtual, or erased, on foot, and I can become,
Or imagine myself, a similarly thin

Substance, remarked only by an alteration,
In the air maybe, when passed by or passed through,
And you can’t breathe, or suddenly can breathe again

But only recognize this a few steps into
The other side, and you turn back, amazed, toward
All you left behind, green and pleasant, and above

All orderly, the matutinal street sweepers,
Every day, plucking
                                        every last scrap of litter.

                3.

Crossing from one zone to another
as if I could abdicate memory,
breath, posture held in.

All that seems autonomic until
we can no longer sustain it—
and it breaks.