Page 70 - Microsoft Word - 1_light travels_FOR FLIPBOOK ADJUSTED.docx

III
After zig-zagging bridges at midnight
cursing Google Maps
blind to one-ways and roadworks,
my adrenalin’s too high for sleep.
Here back in the room my over-active imagination still dwells on riverbanks, home of gypsies.
I read by a bare bedside light like an empty toilet roll
with a ping-pong ball on it,
or a relic broken off
from a float turning slowly
outside in the narrow street to sombre music— beautiful Esperanza de Triana draped in white high above a sea of candles weeping.
The mattress creaks when I stretch my legs
while writing whatever wells.
Still damp from the afternoon’s conference
of continual fifteen-minute, multiple parallel tracks. In the shower I hold my breath
to bypass the drain smell
rising from the bowels of the city.
Dried, in pajamas, glasses on,
I spot
a minute white worm