Les Mesdames du Sfat, by Ann Bar-Dov

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by Pablo Picasso (France) 1907

Les Mesdames du Sfat

It's the third week of August.
Four pregnant women
stand on the pathway
crammed between wall and stairs
in a slum building complex in Sfat.
Itchy and sweating
in the skull-numbing 
afternoon Sfat heat,
we have run out of words
and so, we say nothing,
only slowly stretch our heavy arms to the sky
to try to catch a bit of breeze
and then put them down again
to tug at our belly-flapping smocks.
 
The silence is broken 
by the shrieks of our toddlers 
fighting over toys.
It's the third week of August
and there is no daycare
and thus, no work
and all the fun money has run out
and the toddlers are antsy
and wild, and want ice cream
until it streaks and stickies down their chests,
and then they cry,
and all offers of drinks
and fruit
are slapped away.
 
It's the third week in August,
and we have stepped through a hole
into a space
where nothing is measured
in clicks of a clock
or the sweep of an arrow around a dial.
 
There is nothing 
but the path of the sun across the sky,
dinner at dusk,
showers, 
stories,
bed.
 
Ann Bar-Dov
 
Born in Brooklyn  NY, Ann Bar-Dov has been living in Israel since 1976.  After many years spent teaching everything from kindergarten to yoga to Public Health, she has finally retired and is devoting herself to writing.