High cirrus like gauze, and
a stern November sky.

Helix of little black birds
climbing the grey stained
minarets
of Suleymaniye.

~

Girls in plaid skirts and stockings
smoking, flirting behind the mosque.

Women in headscarves curled on the floor.
Reading, laughing, whispering their stories.


Stories I wonder about from outside.

~

Gypsy boys descend the aqueduct in bare feet.

The copper workers in their shop,
the smelt of fire and hammer’s bell-song.

The timber masons in their studio,
the saws whirring, sawdust in their hair.

A hearth on the floor and smouldering coal;
the dark eyes of bakery boys.

~

Alleyways traversed by laundry.
Homes crumbling from within.

Family posed in windows:
old women in the kitchen, old

men in the parlor. Children up-

stairs, watching pirated television.
Lovers bicker in the bathroom.

In the yard, skinny chickens and a pregnant goose.

~

Istanbul smells of high school football games.
Hot dogs, popcorn; coffee, hot chocolate.

Istanbul smells new like lemon blossoms.
Like Granada and grace.
Like Greece and grief.

Istanbul smells like twenty million springs
and all the long winters to come.

~

What does that even mean?

~

It means there are women
whose lives in full - desire,
failure, hope and heartbreak -
have been these streets entire.

They remember the bare foot gypsy boy
who snuck them into copper lairs
and the woodsmith harems.

They remember a time when these
streets were bigger. When they
contained the mystery of the world.

~

Walking alone through the courtyard, watching the birds,
listening to the wind in the plane trees.

Listening to the girls smoke
and the old women pray.

Trying to hear their stories over the
roar of copper workers and carpenters,

beyond the smell of the infinite past.
Looking high up, watching the birds scatter and fall.