In Fes
I come alive
In the crumbling medina.
Who are these people,
Looks on their faces
A thousand years old?

Wandering through this ancient space,
A stranger,
I flow along
With the convoluted crowd.

Smells ~
Steaming caldrons of snails,
The fetid, open sewer
Everflowing,
Spices,
Roasting mutton,
The tannery,
Overwhelming putrefaction.

Young boys magically weave
In and out,
Frenshly baked bread upon their heads.
One breaks a loaf of bread,
Passes it through the crowd.
I eat the bread,
I humbly take
The milk of every human kindness.

Shopkeepers yell,
“Balak, balak.”
Mules carry Coca-Cola
In worn old bottles
Made before some war.

A wedding passes,
The bride and groom,
So Young,
So beautiful,
Magicians play the music,
Timelessness.

I pass the public baths.
Ponder every mosque,
Dirty children playing,
Families living in one room,
Flies,
People carrying water
From a trickling fawcett.
A constant path to the water’s source.

The night arrives,
A sliver of moon,
Outside the Wall,
I throw open the window
To the street below,
Like some ancient Moorish woman
Sitting on the cool tiles
Of the window seat
Behind the girll,
Hidden by a tree,
I listen to the street sounds,
The muezzin calling people to prayer.

I pray with the people of the medina.

I long to be over the Wall
Where I felt so alive.

Instead, utterly human,
I fall asleep chin upon my knees.
Awakening, I can barely move.

I limp toward the bed,
Slip between clean, cool muslin sheets.
Who washed thesse sheets?
From where did the water come?