Wild

Not good enough wild,
they are broken,
tamed, calmed down.
A seed of their wilderness,
hovering still in their ancestral spirit,
its back not crushed,
it whispers its essence.
Sense memory and instinct,
bewildered,
entwine along each other,
wondering,
where the longing comes from.
Their eyes speak, knowing,
deeply casting shadows,
along the roads on which they are
saddled and ridden.



The Lemon Trees

We tracked our memories
beneath the citrus leaves,
drenched in sweet tobacco scents,
tiers of family stories floating,
among the gurgling hookah pipes.
We smoked clouds around ashes
of charcoal, broken pieces
balanced on cone tops of
flaming silver, a cover for
the whirl of molasses.
Dervishes of apple, rose,
and grape, escaped wildly
and loosely, in fists of bursting
tastes, as taut as the Syrian camps
in the midst of a Tripoli neighbourhood.
We sat among thousands
of these billowing ghosts,
shuddering in the
promise-of-war
stained air currents.