Howard Altmann

A Country Road

The sunflowers, as they do, bow before their maestro
appears, composing green in a field-length huddle,

happy green and sad green, green with no emotion,
green that will turn, as it does, into a symphony

of light, a mass of faces flagging the earth, a protest
of sweeping unity under the sun, rinsing the air

with their fragrant ways. Sunflower, the windows
are down the breeze is cooling the engine of the mind,

what can you teach me before there’s no turning
around, your consummate faith not a tent I can pitch,

the sky a horizon I turn to in disbelief, in anger, in quiet
retreat from my fellow citizens, an infinite blueness

that fails to hold final jurisdiction on my stand,
sunflower, we are at odds, you turn in joy and I in

thunder, so tell me please what it is I am missing from
this exchange, this dance, our shared release? Jew,

you have turned the Talmudic page well into the night,
centuries now, in the darkness of this pogrom and

that pogrom, in heated debate whether the pit’s removal
from the plum is work on the Sabbath, the sanctity

of the flesh a sanctuary of the divine, the washing
of hands before meals the tearing of garments upon

the death of a parent, a lifelong list of this rule here
that rule there, Jew, lay your head down, lay it down

lay it down, listen to the soil as it surrenders, surrenders,
surrenders, season to season, generation to generation,

whatever is in the rains is in my face as I’m talking
to you, green with wonder, green with innocence of what

comes next, without scripture full of script, my mates
one house, one house, one house; a roof over our heads.