a safer place

                                  Triggers

What we see at Yad Vashem,
from Mt. Remembrance, makes me want to flee.
But there is no easy way out,

no trail of emptied popcorn boxes or candy wrappers
to follow to an exit
to the open sky.

I want to return to that beautiful day I recall
just an hour earlier; want to go down
to Jerusalem, its broad streets and black hats.

Instead, I feel trapped by pictures of those who
may have been relatives I never met, never
mourned. I wonder whether I’ve been marked

for murder like them when alarms come about Iran.
What crude sounds might usher in that nuclear
Holocaust, its mutant ideologies, its mayhem?

I slow down, suddenly reluctant to leave. Spirit
Rabbis hover; I sense their gleanings from Yad Vashem
confer an impenetrable shield of prayers.




Koplen 4/23/12