Reflections on the Dead Sea

The poet's imagination conjures up a Dead sea that is as tranquil as the Wisconsin lake but her experience and history tell her otherwise.

The Dead Sea of my imagination:

     is a tranquil Wisconsin lake

     sheltered by cool firs and a cove

     with velvet cat-tails brushing my

     eight-year-old geography mind

     where I recline on buoyant salt

     water that suspends me like

     an air mattress. I stare at the sky,

     floating, floating, floating,

     chagalled above the sea

     even though my fifth grade

     textbook says, “below sea level”.

     .  

 The Dead Sea of my experience:

    is set like an artificial black opal

    in the Israeli desert, beige and brittle

    even in side vision, no green foliage

    to provide protection from a militant,

    Masada sun; ridges of salt, not friendly

    sand threaten my balance as I approach

    the water then walk up to my waist

    trying to keep upright, like a child’s

    plastic, roly-poly toy.  When I lean back

    to float, the salt water supports me as I

    expected but then pushes at my legs as

    insistently as Newton’s Third Law of

    Motion when I try to reestablish them

    on the crenulated seafloor, the water as

    threatening as a Hydra waiting to squeeze

    the life out of me as the history around me

    has done to the people who have tried

    to live here.