1.
The curtain opens.
It is dawn somewhere.
A boy pries open the
door of what used to be
his home and stumbles into
a rubbled landscape of
what used to be his village
and his family’s olive trees
uprooted by bulldozers
and treaties pledging peace.
Teacups, photographs and
his mother’s eyeglasses crunch
beneath his feet like eggshells.
He hears the drone of helicopters and
the hammering of plowshares
being beaten into AK-47s
and hospital beds and
the voice of a soprano
singing a cappella Somewhere
Over The Rainbow.
2-
At midday in a desert
under an indifferent sun
three small dots of green appear:
The first two are the
sneakers a little girl is
wearing. The third spot
is the green shirt worn
by a boy in an oil-on-canvas
portrait she carries
in the basket of the
bicycle she pedals
as she follows the
dust clouds of
regiments of theologians
retreating from the
latest siege of Bethlehem
toward a mountain in
the distance where
one of their Holy Books
insists eternity begins.
3.
Twilight curls like smoke
into darkness and the singer’s
voice quavers into silence
as the rainbow evaporates
and the boy and girl embrace
inside an empty room.
Snow sifts down around
them in dark red flakes the
size of olive leaves. The
throb of helicopter
gunships grows louder.
She gives him the portrait and
he gives her the apple he has bitten.
Outside in the fields women
are harvesting bones.
Commandos slide down cables from
the gunships as the snow deepens.
The curtain drops slowly as.
the audience heaves a sigh and
everyone goes back to sleep.
© 2015 J.M.Keating