Lauren Kohlenberg, 20, of Shorewood, went on a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip in January 2016. She wrote this poem upon her return after visiting the Chan Hashayarot Desert Camp in the Negev desert for a night of camping and reflection in a traditional Bedouin tent. Kohlenberg is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is a sophomore majoring in information science and technology.
Negev
As I awake I can see the palms out the tent door,
their leaves whispering back and forth in the wind.
I am the only one awake, the rest are dreaming of adventures that don’t yet exist.
This group minus one are people I have never met before,
yet after these ten days our stories will be more intertwined
than the ivy vines that had suctioned themselves to that old house on Maryland.
More interconnected, weaving in and out of each other like reckless drivers,
than any of us could have ever imagined.
Just hours earlier we’d embarked on a silent journey of our own.
Dragging ratty mattresses too thin to even bear that name up a rock covered hill.
Bundled up in our warmest layers, flashlights only shining once every eight people.
We didn’t speak and I think that’s what kept us whole.
We were all fragile that night, not knowing what to expect but anticipating something big,
something that would impact us with significance similar to being hit in the gut.
It wouldn’t break us, but would bruise us in a way we would never forget.
We laid there in the cool silence, the air numbing our skin to the point where we didn’t even notice the cold anymore.
Our eyes adjusted quickly, focusing in and out on the inky sky.
Among forty-two beating hearts, we grew to remember the thousands that we had come from.
Knit together like we were, ivy vines woven so tight you couldn’t break them.
As we stared up at that dark sky, that black abyss we remembered our ancestors who had done the same thousands of years before.
Wandering, they’d laid here. Listening to their own hearts beating, their breaths going in and out, in and out.
They’d been here first. They’d seen this land first. They’d perished first so we could be here. They forded this river; they crossed this desert, they, they, they—
But now it was us.
Forty-three beating hearts in dead silence. Staring up at the same sky that covered all of the different lives we led among us. Soldiers to students, leaders to learners. We were all living this differently.
The same sky covered us; the same ground supported us, just as it had done for those who came before us. Never have I felt so connected to a country I’d never entered.
It is my second home.
It is my first life-changing journey.
My vines are tangled around it, whispering so loud the heavens can hear it,
“I’m never letting go.”
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