“My father was a fugitive Aramean”* (a poet in New York)

On Manhattan’s Upper West Side
we founded the Jewish state
approaching it like spies
exploring possibilities we’d given up.
We hear America singing through subway grates
my Yiddishe mama,
lost in the smoke that spirals up to the street like incense
with the muteness of immigrants
and we’ve nothing to offer but suitcases laden with clothes
like first fruits kept under our beds.


Words we had abandoned in childhood:
Our mother never spoke to us in her mother-tongue
(to this day I have no envy, except
for those who conjure foreign
languages like some form of prayer)


Driving to Kennedy Airport
on the way back to an old-new country
I look out through the window and know:
Once we too were such a story,
like a Bruce Springsteen song
riding across the wide river,
tipping our hat to a beautiful
lady. We are tough prairie boys
of handsome looks and jeans.

Once upon a time we were this story, I know.
I've seen Mommy and Daddy’s old
photos, heard him say:
Winter winds blew over the Hudson River.