Porthole to the Shades
One wall in the room on V— Street
sponges up the morning sun, mellows it
and warms. This is the room I go to for repose,
it holds no dark—none, at least, that harms.
Years ago, we rented in Jerusalem for the year—
a dusky ground-floor suite with a brambly garden.
A daughter had stabbed her boyfriend
in the kitchen there;
he succumbed.
I didn’t learn of the killing
until after we’d signed the lease.
Of course we didn’t tell the children.
The drain in the kitchen floor would sometimes make
a hollow gurgling sound. Every so often it belched
dark viscous liquid. The plumber fixed the belching
but a groaning tone set in.
Once I left the children home alone to run some errands;
returned to find them side by side,
immobile on the sofa,
faces pale, eyes gigantic globes.
Everything about the picture was wrong.
As though my stepping out had torn a porthole
to the shades. And errands at the pharmacy and bakery and bank
signalled my remissness.
You went and left us here alone,
the older one reproached.
There was screaming in the kitchen—loud—
like someone being killed—
Geraniums
No one really likes the odor of geraniums—
Robert Hass
They grew in concrete boxes by our rental in Jerusalem—
lined the gun-grey parking lot like soldiers in a bunker: tough.
They stood at nearly human height, yet how they got there
heaven knows—with car exhaust, careening heat,
and hardly any water.
It’s canny how a plant adapts.
Canadian geraniums are decorous domestics—in garden beds,
on windowsills, in planters. Colourful and sunny, never tough.
Not inured to extremes or attack: Jerusalem geraniums are that.
From time to time, I’d act—
and always in the moment just before I’d chop a stalk,
I’d taste a basal craving for that sharp, repelling scent.
