I lean into the olive air

To meet it’s envelope of voices

Rising from the restaurant below.

 

A last group spilling

Into the dim lights of the town square.

 

A crescendo of young men on mopeds,

Women in white laughing arm in arm

Is followed by a sense of retreat

 

A surging of palm leaves

A sadness of waves sorry with their part;

 

That constant need to both

Be and be apart.

 

The thirst in between.

 

I breathe the arid air

And raise a glass at peace

With my lonely feast

And the night is close again,

 

Alive with movements in dark places.

 

A moth against the lamp

A stray cat below the table,

Gone as quickly as he came.