Poem

Eretz Israel

By Rodney Mazinter

Craggy and lined, revealing the stormy tumult of life —

Sun scorched, rain ravaged, emotion bludgeoned —

The farmer’s gaze embraces the land.

Only eyes betray the pain of unrequited adulation,

The land is not his — he is the land’s.

Twenty, thirty, forty million years,

Before puny beings first drove fingers through her thick, rich loam,

She nurtured leafy growth of boundless variety.

What need had she of human devices? What need of science?

She is nature’s child who must return to her mother

Should abuse drive her tenant from the common home.

Man cannot destroy the land unless he first destroys himself.

The farmer’s eyes speak of love;

Scorned, yet he indulges his scornful mistress.

His face, lined, speaks eloquently of hardship endured,

Each furrow tells a tale etched by time:

A fiery fever that takes a wife — a child,

Here a drought; there a flood —

A dry, dustbowl; a sea of mud.

Each event its footprint leaves,

To craggy brow each story cleaves.

Leaving eyes o’er brimmed with love

For soil beneath and God above.