Katie Daley

Longing for Morocco

Now that summer solstice has passed
and the days are losing their traction
on muddy hillsides in the dusky rain,
it’ll be a little easier for me
to get up at dawn
and sit on the front porch
with my bare feet in a bowl of tears.
A little easier to put my face in my hands
and inhale the skunky pungence of fear
and regret and downright loneliness
while radio towers beam right wing talk shows
along dirt roads
and fashion models pout in their sleep
down in New York City. It’s good
that they’re sleeping, that Times Square
is deserted with no one to talk to,
that for a moment
or two the bent nail in the corner
will be left alone
and the eggs uncracked on the counter.

Let me breathe deep this heartbreak of mine,
my queen at the guillotine,
my millionaire begging in the square.
For once in my life
let me not hope that by the time Orion
swaggers in the sky
I will have retrieved the lone sock
from the gutter
and begun again. Let me just sit
in a cafe at Gibraltar
and long for Morocco,
knowing there is no boat,
no passage, no entry.

Listen to me.
I will no longer grow orchids in my dreams
or follow you through nighttime
looking for cairns by the light of a comet
and stumbling among redrock hoodoos.
The stars will continue to be ancient,
the sweet water trapped in the stones,
but you and I will no longer milk them
in the same place and time.

So, like I said, I’m just going to sit here
for a while
in an old, cracked raincoat
and watch the cello strings of rain
glimmer to the ground
while I hold one smooth pebble in my hand.

© 2003 Katie Daley

KATIE DALEY is a performance poet living in the wilderness of Cleveland and currently consumed by trying to weave the bizarre with the mundane, the political with the personal, the agony with the ecstasy.

Back to POEMS; BY GUESTS AND FRIENDS