Saturday 9 June 2018

Southern Israel

National parks
welcoming curious visitors,
ambling among antiquities
imagining centuries old existence.

Masada, cultural icon
and top tourist spot,
sits in frighteningly barren desert,
hostile
harsh
and unforgiving.
Settlements on
the dizzying heights,
vertigo inducing palaces
clinging to cliffs.
Tragic tales of trials
and sacrifice,
death chosen before slavery.

At Ein Gedi
streams in the desert
move from biblical metaphor
to spectacular reality,
as creature and nature
hug the edges of
its life giving flow,
and David's waterfall
sings as grace tumbles
through the scorched earth.

In Qumran's caves
ancient scrolls found
by shepherds.
God's Word to man
preserved in desert air
thick with history,
joy of generations
past and future,
held in this
beloved land.

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