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The Nights of Tel
Aviv 
In Memoriam: Florence Klinger
1.
On the first night in Tel Aviv
she dined at a table
with the Old Ones
after dinner she started
on a walk with us
then went upstairs
for her jacket
the others went on ahead
while I stood there waiting
with her husband
but even bundled up
the wind was too much for her.
I'd arrived that afternoon
to find her in the room
next door to me
she came out in the hall
to welcome us
as if her being there early
were the most natural thing
she'd learned, she told us,
not to let the hucksters
stop you for even a moment
or you won't get away.
2.
On the second night in Tel Aviv
we took cabs to Jaffa
but she didn't go there
either
Jaffa's steps, like Jerusalem's hills,
would be a strain
in Jerusalem, at dinner,
she told us how the rabbi
tends to overplan things
lamenting that we weren't seeing
all the promised places.
She's here now,
that's all that matters
and remember the cousins
who live on a kibbutz here?
she spoke with such joy
of going to visit them
it worked out even better,
they came here to Tel Aviv,
stayed in the very room
I sleep in now.
3.
I'm not sleeping.
On this last night in Tel Aviv
we all ate together
at a Yemen restaurant
in the morning we'd head home,
she'd take off for Paris
to spend a week with the brother
her husband hasn't seen
in fifteen years
we eat to say hello, goodbye
then I go back to the room
and gag it all up,
always scared of leaving
even my parents
in a room that joins mine
sleep and won't hear
this trip's been hard on everyone
but ten days later, for her,
there will be no memory.
At night in Tel Aviv
the hucksters still shout on streets
selling all of us blouses we don't want
over and over.
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