The Evening Is an Interlude
The evening is but a pause,
A cold sigh
Or a new paragraph.
All days and nights pause here
Time turns over and continues the narrative.
The evening is but a pause.
The Trees Every Evening
The trees cradle the shavings of day
Only to wave and cast it away
Over the green shoulders of the hills.
But the day grows back again
In the solitude of night,
Sprouting from the branches
I had sawed and felled.
Cigarette
The cigarette,
Glowing between my fingers,
The sun’s farewell just a puff or two away.
The sea asked of me one last drag
And in the pause between the puff
I saw the day grow ashen.
Sometimes…
Sometimes, the moon peeks
From behind the mountains
And measures the snow.
If all is clear, it will summon the flock
One by one, they come out, shy little stars
Some wrapped in a woolly haze,
Others a-shiver, sneaking away from the moonlight.
The herd glitters all over the sky
Until their shepherd comes calling, ‘Hoosh, hoosh…’
And herds them home.
Horizon
You can see it in the horizon
The ink-black cat emerging.
Its face caressing the twilight
Which will soon turn red-hot, sipping the sun.
It licks its whiskers
Slick with yellow tongue
Lifts a corner of the night
And escapes towards tomorrow’s dawn.
Dirty Ragged Dawn
Dawn breaks, grimy and bruised
The sky looms tattered
As though a cat had trampled
That sheet of sky
With paws, wet and dirty.
Forlorn, Widowed Voices
Often forlorn, widowed voices
Echo from the mosque’s backyard
Linger on the brick wall
Wail with parched lips against stone-deaf ears
A requiem for a primal Allah
Who placed the human race in their wombs
And retired to a silence known to the grave.
Ever So Slowly
Slowly, ever so slowly, the bottle has emptied out.
We drank of this year, sip by sip
Each swig, a taste of fire,
It left our lips scorched.
