| SOMETIMES (Tangier) ... |
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... it is only the guitar a sudden flurry like a partridge of flamenco crashing up through cushat fragrant boughs dead smells can't revive hillsides dry with juniper, stonewhite heat the musk of djellaba filled with figs fresh-beaten from a single tree high on a sloping field, resin and sandalwood. Looking out, beyond the lighthouse the Pillars of Hercules rippling the mediterranean's bookcart canvas drained to a dusty blur, The Rock. Cue for an owl, small in moonlight, a niche gone cockerel cold from the bread of the day's baked sandals. Hopping the mat like gay bucaneers, you dashed these insect Errol Flynns - "Die Flöhes!" - and shivered as we rolled in powder, our sweating bodies clogged with DDT. |
 Patrick Waites
lives in a terrace beneath the shadow of Winchester Cathedral, UK.
In 1994 his first novel, Launch Burial won him the
Southern Arts Writer's Award. His poetry has been
published in such anthologies as Children of Albion
(Penguin, 1969) and The Language of Poetry (McGraw-Hill, 1984)
as well as in magazines and radio broadcasts.
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Poem & Photograph © Patrick Waites, 1999 Web design by Gerald England This page last updated: 27th October 2002. |