Potential

A new original poem

Potential

by Daniel Cotzin Burg

I hear they found a grenade at Be’eri

two years after the kibbutz attack when 101 farmers and writers and foreign workers and mothers, fathers, children were slaughtered.

And 32 kidnapped to Gaza.

Two years ago this month I stood in the remains of a community, helmet and flak jacket, trembling in the freshness of it. Gingerly I stepped across the rubble looking for anything dangerous underfoot. The army had cleared it of the bodies

and munitions.

But burnt out, crumbling buildings, soiled bedrooms, knives, reddish-brown shadows of the dead (still tacky), the smell

lingered. And one undiscovered grenade hidden until yesterday.

I’m told the hostages are coming home. They’re saying the fighting will stop and Gaza will be rebuilt. And peace may yet break out.

The Hebrew word for grenade is rimon, pomegranate, the fruit we eat at the New Year because it’s full of seeds. The blood-red juice is tart, and it stains.

They’re rebuilding the kibbutz. A construction worker found the device at Be’eri.

unexploded.

Nearly two years on, grenade used in October 7 attack found on Kibbutz Be’eri