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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.
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