In the blue mist of an abandoned night highway
between the beauty of the Givat Chaim mountains
suffused into a single silhouette against the night sky
and suddenly from the right the burst of a hooowwlll—
so close
like something cut with the light touch of a knife—
or the animal within us brought to her knees in birth;

I’m afraid they will never leave me
these involuntary tremors,
the haunting voices
that ambush me
in every language—even in silence
despite all the ways humans are strange—mammals
who rise out of my body with a wail.

Suddenly a slit in the mist
from the hit of your headlights
making you so clear and cold
that a cry rises from within
heard by both the living and those resurrected
now in the grind of every day
within wedge of the mountain.