North

We have never needed a compass. Here, where we

sail, the North that is, we need commas and conjunctions;

we need socks for our feet.

Veiled women do not need anchors. Wombs here are trenches.

Nobody drowns in the North.

I once went sight-seeing to a bunker. We had tea and an over-priced

packet of potato chips and mud and oxygen, yes. We climbed out

to better things- a house, guards, guns.

Mountains, caught up in an embrace. Echoes, mistaken for heartbeats.

Rivers giving themselves up. Temples, mosques, churches.

For whom the bell tolls? Never mind.

Poetry must rhyme; every syllable accounted for. Here in the North,

there’s a question nobody answers. Everything is flawlessly flawed.

Nobody drowns.

This is mine. And that is yours.

One owns the boat. The other, oars.

Rivers, shores. Manners, mores.