Ten Minutes in the Negev
When I was in Israel this summer,
We stayed a night with the Bedouins.
When the sky was dark, our guide
Took us out into the Negev Desert.
We did not speak as we walked
Over the pale stones and dust.
Instead, we all hummed together
In a wordless song called a Nigun.
We stopped when the lights from the
Bedouin camp had disappeared behind a hill.
And our guide invited us to scatter,
Find a place where we could get comfortable,
And experience the Negev on our own.
I found a flat spot to lie down,
Took off my shoes to pad my head,
And stared up at the stars.
Alone in the desert, ten minutes
Felt like ten seconds or ten hours,
Or both, or neither, or in between.
There was the dusty ground beneath me,
Cool and dry, and somehow soft to the touch.
Little shrubs crouched near my head
And my right foot, their rigid forms silent
In a breeze so light it could be
Mistaken for the hills breathing.
And those stars.
So many that they seemed
to swirl like a Van Gogh
When I tried to focus enough to
Pick out the Dippers and Orion.
Each time I blinked, the sky stilled,
But within seconds, my eyes would
Give up on taking them all in and
I would get the illusion that the stars
Were wandering amongst themselves.
Our guide called us back together
With another Nigun.
As he counted us,
I looked back towards the Bedouin camp
Just in time to see a shooting star.
Everyone else had missed it. It was all mine.
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