Eve’s Premonition

Jul 14

Outside the tent, we gather

beet-red berries of the Zahroor

for tea, for heartache

and I think of the day

you were born, my son

when your father cried:

His name is Abel.

My breath caught.

My heart lost its beat.

Why Abel? A name meaning vapor,

no substance, in vain?

Why not Michael? Rafael?

From that point on, I kept watch.

Do you recall the night

I strapped you to my chest

and we hiked with your father

and brother into the wadi,

picking purple zanzabil

when a sap-green snake

slithered across our path,

eyes wide? Behind an acacia,

your brother crouched

waiting to slice the snake

with his serrated sword –

desperate for praise

from your father.

Poet; speech pathologist, wife, mother, grandmother. Her book of poetry, Where Blue is Blue, was published in October, ’20, by Main Street Rag.

Undercover