They are not my enemy,
I remind myself,
though they are
tearing up the public hill just past my fence
with loud tools and
hacking with Weedwackers the wild violets
and new lavender spread
across the hill in bird patterns.
We had watched them grow.
One worker paused
at the flare of yellow tulips, and from my window
I saw him look
around for a second and
leave them, then look around and
separate the small flowers
from their stems, half-
pausing to step over them with his boot,
leaving to finish his job.
When they move to farther hills
I will see it from the right perspective—
as a small, inevitable injury.
I know this. But here, at home, I am left
with the broken yellow-purple bruising and the memories
of my father, who saw
Israeli jets swoop over his house in Jerusalem and a
military helicopter fire finger-length bullets
into the hill in his front yard,
and I wonder what seeds will grow from this,
what next year will look like, what sort of
hate it is to watch things fall apart.