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| Ephesus, Street Columns |
past a fountain dedicated to cranky emperors
or a bath set aside for slumbered senators,
I turned on an ankle, hard, twisted ligaments.
Strangely, I have never seen these threads,
these ligaments that hold, so I'm told,
bone and muscle, energy and anatomy, together:
unseen connectivity, or communion deeper than skin.
But limping now, around a small Turkish town,
I feel them, sense them, know them, these ligaments.
Six old men in worn suits are huddled around a table,
a sidewalk cafe, shifting tiles, telling stories,
playing a game they've been playing for hours
and will be tomorrow too.
And four round women, Anatolian earth goddesses,
are bent over roses in a public square,
pruning and touching and turning quiet hours
to ligaments, ligaments young lovers will come
to harvest for a simple table, a simple feast, tonight.
Thirty children are scampering after a ball
in a yard where teachers watch, but not closely,
because their playing is their learning to
run fast, kick hard, jump high, think quick,
without hurting one another.
And down the road, a young man stops to help
an old woman cross the busy street;
and inside the mosque, a muezzin sings his heart
inside-out; and in the hills the Roman ruins
remind a thousand tourists that nothing lasts forever.
I limp around this Turkish town, my own bit of history,
grateful for all these ligaments, for the ordinary
communion just beneath the skin of things, and places,
and us.
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| Rack Rummy in a Selcuk Cafe |
