Intifada

Wind this story
tight around an
olive so the
letters pierce it
and absorb its
oil

There where fingerpads
meet fruit how many whorled
signatures have sealed a
history that insists
now through leathern silvered
leaves

The pickers hear it while
they fill slung pouches and
tilt their chins to let it
brush their cheeks the ones who
planted trees have never
left

Two thousand years they’ve tapped
high branches swinging long
sticks ripeness has fallen
to nets laughing children
lift together from the
ground

They call this home they call
this day’s work expressing
oil from plump black golden
sustenance to pour
and pass from hand to hand
though

When bulldozers
brazenly up-
root this story
deafened children
lurch into the
wall

Lee Sharkey