On us the fervent sun set
on my 6 weeks of edenic knowing
the eastern loss
of our new mourning,
a disc eclipsed by the Mount of Gilboa
(the place of ancient dying–
that of Saul, not Ruth)
you and I
sharing of the M’sheekha, of liberation and rebirth,
but our friendship closing, lost in
wine and straw in the shallow draw above Kibbutz Sde Nahum
——–a temptation lurked,
a warm drink, and a bedded look–
thankfully not to take;
In the last night
for the eternity
of Galilee’s winter rains
I lived in regret.
But in retrospect,
let there be no dead olive memory, no palm branches of
mourning below Gilboa—
Only transcending
remembrance in
the Eternal One’s
Presence.
About Daniel Wilcox
Daniel Wilcox earned his degree in creative writing from Cal State University, Long Beach. A former activist, teacher, and wanderer from Montana to the Middle East, he casts his lines out upon the world's turbulent waters and far shores in Counterexample Poetics, Moria,The Copperfield Review, Leaf Garden, The Bicycle Review, Full of Crow, Right Hand Pointing, The Centrifugal Eye, Unfettered Verse, A Handful of Stones, and more. "The Faces of Rock," based on his time in the Middle East, appeared in both The Danforth Review and Danse Macabre. A book of his poetry, Dark Energy, was published in 2009 by Diminuendo Press. Daniel lives with a second volume of poems Psalms, Yawps, and Howls, a speculative novel, The Feeling of the Earth, and his wife on the central coast of California--not in that order.
His writing Web sites are: PsalmsYawpsHowls.com, LightWaveSeeker.Weebly.com, and Seaquaker.com.
