In the rooftop room of this road's end riad
As la résponsable clatters together a breakfast that
Betrays her belief in big foreign bellies
Sunlight gathers across the bed
In pools as precise as
The three arched windows that beckoned it in

I, in one pool, wake slowly to the lap of warmth
Against the grain of my lids, eyes fast shut, listen
To the murmur of the courtyard fountain
Sleepily releasing its snaking stream
From a narrow brass pout
To splash in a tiled bowl that
A blistering sun will never warm

I can sense Her
Slow response to morning's first caress
In the pool that almost touches mine
Stretching each long dancer's limb in turn
Arching her back a little then
Turning her face and torso towards
The swelling of the day
Her copper hair spread out across her pillow like a fan
For promise to play, to linger, to glint on

Out in the street, noises begin
Distinct and close, lancing in
The rattle of a shutter raised,
A shouted hullo, an Allah be praised
The creak and rumble of a handcart
On its way, a porter's early start,
For crammed on cargo on
Djemaa el Fna

Then, from not as far, filling up the air
With mellow persuasions, there,
Honey thick, a chergui of sound
Pours through the souks
Sliding on quartertones
Hanging on hooks, stripping out bones
Swelling the high notes, cracking evasions
Twisting in the heart with familiar precision
The serpentine, sinuous call to prayer
From the Ben Youssef Mosque on the little square

The pool I imagined her in, I know, is empty - dry
This journey I took alone for distance sake
As the certainties I used to crave decay,
Liquid at the root, I trust in this - to wake
Perhaps one frost numbed day
In some Baltic city where memory is frozen out
And the music of the morning, cold and spare,
Echoing doubt
Is a take it or leave it affair.

©John Mackie January 2009