The dead follow you sometimes
where mountains are lost
in a white avalanche of poems;
they wear keys around their necks
and you hear them jingle sometimes
but you think of windcatchers
and catch a waft of dirt from somewhere
deep inside another memory, filling your
nostrils with the scent of olive trees and
strawberry blossoms.

You read poems to old gods and lovers you
barely remember and pigeons follow your
crumbs, warming themselves in your breath.

Hell, you've been here before, you say and
you awaken in your Palestinian dream
looking for your bulldozed home but you're a Jew and
you've never run barefoot through your own house
with manna stuck to your feet, and honey dripping
from your mouth
and you'll never wear a prayer shawl, bowing,
bowing to the same God.

Only Buddhists and Hindus bow to one another in the name of God.
Only Christians wear a golden crucifix to remind them
of the holy land where love must die to be reborn.
Your pilgrim feet, so weary, your heaven so very far away.