On Carmel beach he saunters

where turquoise meets the border,

His arms outstretched

His upturned palms

Seek signals of a different order,

Eyes the milky horizon line

For signs of calmer water.

His sullen self numb

to the laughter of companions,

neither one thing, the other or either,

Frei nor Frum, Jew nor 'Goy,'

Mount Hermon broods over Babylon.

Why does he hanker away hours?

What does his heart desire?

As brittle as dried flowers.

He's out of sorts with the desalinated state,

Where love finds it's expression

As jealousy and hate, and the fine wine

Of the purple line leaves a bitter after-taste.

Assassins dispatch, contradictions confound,

tired aspirations rake the frontiers flat.

What's the itch he can't scratch?

Golan Magic propaganda grates,

And the Jesus Trail – for Christ's sake!

From Haifa to Nice, Nice to Montone,

Where his voice wormed it's way through

One dark winter night stateless and lonely,

Somehow he knew this was home.

Mornings of defeat, the triumphs of the evening,

The ebb and flow of feeling set the tone,

Welling up of passion, advancing, retreating,

this lying down mute and alone. 

Forging our agreements, fuelling our dispute, 

exposing the raw rootless discontent -

A wound so sore it bleeds,

'Too much', he says, 'don't touch, don't touch,

I need you'.

In Haifa now he rediscovers

His life in the eye of the tempest,

He has his lover and the love of his friends,

Boundaries, edges, crises and endings. All this -

Why swap high-security for uncertainty and risk?

He calls from his confinement

Intimate and cold, waves over verges

and marches, across unbridgeable distances

In space and time – a thousand miles

and two decades if truth be told,

But we are connected, fingers through fences,

at the perimeter of his heart,

where sentries forbid entry

to his soul.

On Carmel beach he wonders

What would happen if next,

He abandoned himself to the moment

Relinquished his grip on the rest,

Let limits slip and barriers lift,

He types out a text

He holds up his phone in his palm,

But the signals adrift.

It's no cause for alarm.

My message is already clear,

For now and whatever, for love and for honour,

“My heart is a harbour

You can shelter here”