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| The Yatir Forest in Israel ends at the border with Palestine. The largest human-created forest in Israel, 12-square-mile Yatir was created in the 1960s on semi-arid land with four million trees, 90 percent of them Aleppo pine. —National Geographic, March 24, 2023 after Hamas, after Gaza |
A ring of trees in Israel
encircle his legacy, a memorial
from his bowling buddies
three decades ago. The certificate
declared from Leviticus:
When you come to the land
you shall plant trees.
My father never visited that land
and neither have I but I trust
his trees are there still in the Negev Desert
perhaps an arboreal Heinz 57 of carob,
redbud, olive, almond, pear, cypress,
cedar, and oak.
Bologna sauce is what my father
cooed he’d squeeze out of me
when his hugs were hymns
in gratitude for finally finding
the good life with wife, daughter, son.
His ideas of assimilated Jewish
migrated to my secular shaping.
Synagogue just on high holidays,
Sabbath just another Friday night
for cheeseburgers and Hogan’s Heroes.
And Zionist? He was more B’nai Brith
bowling league and temple dues.
These days I imagine his Israeli trees
forsaken by milk and honey. Their roots
sponging up bloodshed. Their skins
trembling with gunfire and bomb.
Their bent architecture davening
a shameful Kaddish.
Their barren fractals of branches
reaching and reaching
for nothing but air.
Rikki Santer’s poetry has been published widely and has received many honors including several Pushcart and Ohioana book award nominations, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2023 she was named Ohio Poet of the Year. She is currently serving as vice-president of the Ohio Poetry Association and is a member of the teaching artist roster of the Ohio Arts Council. Her twelfth poetry collection Resurrection Letter: Leonora, Her Tarot, and Me is a sequence in tribute to the surrealist artist Leonora Carrington.