Haibun in English

Descent from Safed

caught in the bathroom!
such a cooling silkiness
of our fireplace bat

Apparently, the advance of invisible armies from the Far East does take  place in the land of the Bible.
My hot sulfuric springs -- developed by the X Roman Legion -- are located exactly on the eastern border at the spot where the warriors of Islam crossed into the Palestine of Byzanthines more than a thousand years ago...

I am the only one on a bus and I could not even buy a ticket since a driver has been forbidden to handle money due to the scary onslaught of nanowarriors who are viral and nasty.
The bus rides by the Mount of Beatitudes and in no time reaches the lake. But there is no shuttle to Hammat Gader/El Hamma. No onsen for you, a greedy man.

Plan B, quick! Another onsen (the ancient geothermal effluvium) is still reachable.  Hamei Tveria!

Adjacent to it there is a sacred site in the hills  containing the remains of Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker and the prayer halls under egg-shaped domes. Almost  forty years ago, I found an iron-wrought balcony outside the sepulchre and spent the humid night in my splendid army sleeping bag there.
In the 20th century there was no national park here.

A flower child septugenarian invites me in on her yearlong pass to see the site. Ah, the miracle!

I check Hamam Suleiman (hot baths) of the Turks, the southern gate of the city of Tiberius and the Greco-Roman pool.

I enter the huge pavilion above the synagogue. 

It is like a hangar and it is oppresively hot and humid.

The mosaic floor is largely intact.
The Jewish law and tradition forbid the depiction of human faces but they are there though many Hebrew symbols are included around Helios, the Hellenistic sun-god...Does it signify the thorough assimilation of local Judeans of late antiquity? Is it like the Reform Jews in the USA? Some families put up a Hanukkah bush during Christmas and prepare gifts.

I am looking for my iron wrought balcony but it is not there. Not even a hole in the building. How could it be?
My memory plays a trick on me.

The huge grassy hill behind the edifice has been carted away, apparently to make room for parking.


Wow! Under my feet the shine of a glass sherd. I touch a thousand year old perfume bottle with its  characteristically uneven lip.

poets meet in March:
from my onsen-bathed body   
the famed smell of hell