The Green Notched Pole
The first thing I learned this morning was that even an empire can be held in place by a bird with poor timing. I woke before the market drums, not because I am disciplined, but because a boy in the ...
Continue readingThe Two Tally Marks
The first thing I heard in Knossos was not the sea, though the sea is never absent here. It was the horn before dawn, low and cracked, blown from somewhere above the west court while the sky was still...
Continue readingThe Too New Twenty Cent Piece
The first thing I noticed in Soweto this morning was not the police van at the corner, though it was there, idling with the patience of a crocodile beside a spaza where women bought mealie meal in blu...
Continue readingThe Padded Steel Case
Geneva this morning had the damp self-importance of a city that has read all the rules and found them regrettably correct. The lake was the color of brushed tin. Trams hissed along wet rails past the ...
Continue readingThe Bone Tag Labeled Silver
The lake was low enough this morning to show the black teeth of old stakes beside the causeway, but the canoes still came in thick, noses knocking, paddles flashing under baskets of amaranth, beans, f...
Continue readingThree Sandglasses In Wet Mortar
Alexandria received me this morning with the usual courtesy of a port: gulls screaming over fish scales, sailors swearing in three languages before breakfast, and a customs boy asking to see my papers...
Continue readingThe Red Thread Twig
The Tigris had the color of hammered tin this morning, with a wind from the flats pushing grit into every fold of my robe and into the hinge of my borrowed patience. Across the river, Ctesiphon sat in...
Continue readingThe Ash Bucket Upside Down
The first thing I noticed this morning was not the fog but the way people had made room for it. Thessaloniki is still Thessaloniki: the tram rails shining with rain, the Vardaris wind worrying at coa...
Continue readingThe Basket of Confiscated Sleeve Cloths
By morning my feet had learned the broken paving west of Qinghefang better than my eyes had. Hangzhou under the Heavenly Kingdom is still Hangzhou: damp stone, tea steam, willow fluff in the gutters, ...
Continue readingThe Tin Token In My Pocket
The first thing I saw in Bodrum was not the castle, though it was there in its square, stubborn Crusader mass above the harbor, making every new flag look temporary. Nor was it the fishing boats, patc...
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