For Yair Dalal

Driving to Monterey
where fog caresses telephone poles,
and cypress trees bend to the waves,
where Pampas grass etches
an arc above a pod of surfers,
all their wet suits glistening black,

as your music slices a hole
through the roof of my car
without acetylene torch,
a dance of sandstorms fills my head
and runs out my ears.

Sitting aloft the camel of your oud
there's a country vast before me,
unlike the U.S.
where my parents emigrated
as yours did from Iraq to Israel.
My soul drinks deep from desert wells

as light parses sky
into successive openings,
just watch as layers fall apart,
a veil shakes loose from the Shekinah
who appears like a Bedouin on the horizon,
luminous in her presence.

I want to believe there can be peace.
I want to believe that a face viewed
through the cross hairs
of a weapon
is another human being
with eyes,
nose,
tongue,
mouth,
and two ears
that listen.