Numbers always seemed
Suspect to me.
The enemy has only
twenty percent
missiles left.
Great.
So the one speeding at me
Can only kill a fifth of me?
Which percent will go to Heaven
And which part
other than that part to Hell?
But I have less than twenty percent
of my days left
So it can more than kill me?
But barely touch children?
That must be why schools are open!
I try to put
Full faith in announcements
Of numbers
Suspect to me.
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 and a short novel in Hebrew "NO WAY!" about the abuses of "parental alienation" in Israel.
