In the new world, I am a child of the valley.
I don’t know what grows in the Negev but Rabbi says we made it bloom.
We want roots so we dig for a mitzvah —
he says when you plant a tree in Israel, you express-mail a holy deed.
Eighteen years later, a soldier tells me “Any American can move to Ma’aleh Adumim”
through the bus’ tilted windows — he still won’t say where his grandmother was born.
I look out at a stampede of pines over the rubble of uprooted olive trees.
We never learned the Yiddish word for “forest”.
Beneath it all, the seed of the one I planted —
my envelope baring its teeth.
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Devorah Levy-Pearlman is a poet, essayist, and community organizer originally from Central California and currently based in New Orleans.
