And a Time to Throw Sand

After all, we are promised

To be like grains of sand,

Even while we are threatened

To become glass in nuclear fire.

Was the Minister irked

To get sand and not glass?

Do the Ministers prefer that we

Fear the glass and forget the sand?

Is the equality of the sand grains

Somehow not democratic,

While weighing who has collected more

Is pure democracy?

Or is the sand in the hour-glass

Of failed politicians running out?

Or do handcuffs it disappoint,

Failing to restrain sand?

The sands of unity and equality

Withstand the chaos of waters,

While some craved madmen

Cuchulain-like make claims

To battle the chaos

They create.

There is a time for everything

Under Heaven

And upon the Shores.

Let the sands fly.

About the Author

Alan Flashman was born in Foxborough, MA, and gained his BA from Columbia, MD from NYU, Pediatrics, Adult and Child Psychiatry specialties at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, The Bronx, NY. He has practiced in Beer Sheba since 1983, and taught mental health at Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and Ben Gurion University. Alan has edited readers on Therapeutic Communication with Children (2002) and Adolescents (2005) in Hebrew, translated Buber's I and Thou anew into Hebrew, and authored Losing It, an autobiography, and From Protection to Passover. He recently published two summary works of his clinical experience (both 2022) Family Therapies for the 21st Century and Mental Health in Pediatrics.