Crafted

a poem

by Anne Selden Annab

Did they plant you I wonder
to excuse
the theft
make pretty the pilfering
of land- and archaeology
and every story

Did they find you elsewhere
and save you
for a day and a place
where you might be deployed

Carefully crafted into a story
to turn hearts and minds
away from Palestine
when it counts most

poem copyright ©2011 Anne Selden Annab

*photo by (AP) - "An Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) restorer displays a Byzantine 0.8 by 0.6-inch (2 by 1.5cm) Christian icon box made of bone with a cross carved on the lid in Jerusalem, Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011...The relic was found in the City of David excavation, a Jerusalem dig named for the biblical monarch believed to have ruled a Jewish kingdom from the site...The politically sensitive dig is located in what is today the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, just outside the Old City walls in east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by the Palestinians as their capital."