From one step on a ladder to heaven,
I dreamed I was seen
and seeing her,
far beyond my locked down horizon.
Yet underway back I tarried
on a thoughtful mountain
to wrestle a muscled angel,
all night long,
or was it my angry twin,
until dawn,
belatedly to realize
how one-sided
her end meanwhile came.
Unresolved syllables
of dreams and regrets,
dripple into the Jordan,
receding sign and sound, evenly leveling
within its rippling water.
And what I thought
she should have said,
and what I wanted to say,
yet never did,
lingers awhile,
like a lost sock finally found,
while its missing other
had been meanwhile
thrown away.
For my mother, Aliza, who died in Israel during the coronavirus pandemic, when flying to Israel was suspended.