moments

two flashes from the past few months...

1. A September morning: wind up the mountain

Today Doweika is a ghost town… a prison.
No boisterous music blasts from ramshackle microbuses:
Police suffocate the bottom, drown the top…
white uniforms pressed with a pompous starch.

It is the poor who suffer at the hands of the law.

I am so angry I could cry,
witnessing powers at play.

And yet there is our little friend Ahmed…
hanging onto a teeming bus as it flies around the bend.
A baby drops its shp shp,
and smiles exchange as it is restored.
A woman marches in dignity:
don’t you dare tell her who she is or stand in her way!
A myriad forms of angry and loving resistance flourish here in stagnant puddles,
hide amidst the garbage,
slip past on the knowing smile of a dog.
This too shall pass.


2. zebaleen dreams

Atop a tenuous building hides
a nesting-wedded-penthouse:
easter egg hues and love adorn
happy chambers that catch only putrid perfume
and a sea of satellites as the wind shifts.
Garbage piles line streets like trees,
growing voraciously
as sorters continue the messy work.
Here, NGOs, almost as prevalent as the rats and pigs,
pedal solar energy, needlework, or shampoo bottle solutions to a poverty paradise
where people somehow make enough to stay where they are:
the cliffy fringes of sprawl.
A shocking blend of ambition, brilliance, peace, and generosity are etched
in the souls of these friends,
as used to a wandering khawagaya as the flies.
What is needed here?
Change – how?
What are your desires, apart from the great Canadian escape and a family?
A wisdom,
too seldom tapped by professional egos
(whose expertise often falls short of listening)
springs from lively spirits
in this place of miracles and mud,
hepatitis and tottering two-year-olds.
Thank you for sharing this space with us,
may we be worthy of your friendship
and support you as you continue on your paths.