O’ where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
Buildings and prairies reflected in their depths;
Those of curiosity and enthusiasm for life.
If only for a moment,
You gifted me a trance-
One of comfort, a curious break from
Melancholy goodbyes.
Where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
Are you gazing upon desert lands?
Destroyed buildings and artillery tanks?
You should be exaltant,
Reveling in the joys of life,
Floating in the sea God gifted your sight.
You should not be so far removed.
Where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
Where were you traveling that day on the train?
When you approached and asked if you could sit across from me?
I admired you the whole hour-and-a-half ride.
I worked up the courage to ask in slow English about the next stop.
I wish I would have said more;
I wish I asked where you were going.
Where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
When I got off the train onto the platform
I lifted my soil-colored gaze into the swarm of people.
Sixteen years old, straining for salt-filled depths,
I searched for sea-green eyes;
You were gone.
Where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
I think about you, tapping to the music you listened to on the train.
Your head bobbed and body shook,
Long graceful fingers motioning along with the much-too-loud beats,
Bleeding through the headphones.
Maybe you are a musician;
Your slender fingers are ideal for piano.
You looked a year or two older than me;
That meant that soon, you would go to the army.
Perhaps that is where you were traveling.
Perhaps just two months later,
This is where you would stay,
In a war-ravaged country,
Sea-green eyes fraught with fear,
Stormy gray taking over.
Where art thou,
O’ beautiful boy with the sea-green eyes?
I search for your face in pictures of dead Israeli soldiers,
Hostages and citizens.
Are you safe?
Do you still listen to music with the same enthusiasm,
Approach life with the same spark I saw in those sea-green eyes
All those months ago on the train?
Do you still observe Israel as if for the first time,
Ogling at skyscrapers and artificially introduced trees,
As we did through our window in August?
Or has the green dimmed to a fading gray;
The horrors of the world extinguishing your excitement for life?
Where art thou,
The boy with the sea-green eyes?
Death and destruction threaten to take away their spark;
O’, may you gaze upon the sea-green waters of Israel once more,
Finding home in their warming froth,
For you are a son of Israel,
And your sea-green eyes shall not be drowned in a pool of black and red.
