WANDERING

WANDERING

This old rambling man
is trying to see over the next hill
if he can.
Sipping coffee
he remembers in the cold light of dawn
other days and other ways.
The sound track envelops him
with drum beats
and visions of belly dancers
in smokey Egyptian cafes.
Half stoned
the waking dream unfolds.
The sound becomes so loud it quacks.
His mumbled conversation
makes no sense.
His head explodes in technicolor
tambourines and jumping coins
he feels the stirring in his loins,
she smiles and shakes a hip
at his nervous smile
and the sweat on his lip.
Embarrassed by the obvious symbol of his need
he is a fool, a horny fool indeed.
Stumbling into the dawn
his need and she are gone.
That empty empty feeling
of being slightly off balance and reeling.
The dry taste in his mouth
her scent still on his hands and in his nose
her woman's taste and the faint smell of a rose.
He walks the Cairo street in the early dawn
with a silly grin on his face and his money gone.
Today a million miles away
he looks at the early morning studio jumble
by he light of an early sun
he knows he should be humble.
The fates have spared him from a youth of squandering
his gifts left in an anonymous crotch in Cairo
while
wandering.

JWL

Copyright John-Ward Leighton
17 August 2006
All rights reserved