Where Do We Go From Here

If you wish to visit family in Hebron,

or spend Christmas in Bethlehem,

you can’t get there from here.

There are no prayers

to be offered in Jerusalem.

A few miles is a world away.

*

Here, children do not dream of the future.

Like everyone else, they simply stand still.

The places on TV may as well not be real.

You can’t get there from here.

The sun burns orange as it sets in the West.

You can’t get there from here.

*

Gaza:

one hundred and forty-one square miles

of no place to go.

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Author's Note: I wrote this piece several years ago, but recent events have made it more poignant, once again. The inspiration for this poem, aside from the obvious, was Google maps.

If you Google directions from Gaza to anywhere else, it doesn't work. I don't know of another place, short of an island, where that is the case. It is a peculiarity that only highlights the reality on the sad reality on the ground.