Bethlehem Has the Best Food

O little town of civil unrest
where rubber bullets bounce
off gummy smiles that suffocate
within angry nests of facial hair;
small village once that now sprawls heavy
with grit and pathos and smoked Byzantium:
your churches ache for clear skies,
too shaded and God-locked by oceans
of spilled religion.

How still we see thee lie in almost death
while bagel vendors tear bread apart
to show us all the good white inside.
Pink and brown, your children scrabble
in stony ruts none remember making
that stretch the length of damp streets.
Dark chips of oil-rich eyes peer at me,
asking stoically

"Do you pray for a piece of Jerusalem?"

And the bells ring at the Nativity,
untold years of holy scent still roiling
in grim communion, blessing the bones
of Crusaders' ghosts that lie beneath her walls.
A call to prayer, piercing sweet rise
of an old man's faith lances keenly
through the smoke, and all who listen
face the East and wonder
when is lunch.