The Promenade undulates like Santa Monica
The preening athletics at outdoor gyms like Venice Beach
The wooden boardwalk spongy and hot like Long Island’s Long Beach

The Ayalon bumps and has potholes like Route 526 at home
The drivers reckless, like NYC cabbies
The Tel Aviv suburbs ugly and overpopulated like Queens.

What is this need to find the familiar
In the unfamiliar?
To quantify the exotic in terms I can understand?

Am I trying to find at heart where we are the same?
Or am I trying to dilute the strangeness
So I don’t fear our differences?