Amunition Hill

Amunition Hill

The hill where we took our class trip,
fourth grade, had a stone with hundreds of names.

We walked through the trenches touching the sand bags
passing fingers along machine-gun stands now laden with dust.

The view of Jerusalem rolled beneath us—this is where we
came from, that is where they stood. The main bunker fell last.

We sat and ate our sandwiches under old pine trees, sparrows
twitted sunlight in our hair.

Then I stared at the statue of metal flame and whispered to the teacher
my uncle had died here     and touched

one of the names. Arieh Natanzon
the name I chose from the stone,   classmates

looking at me differently, some of them
kicked pebbles with their shoes, some    looked at the earth.