A WALK AT DAWN IN A STRANGE TOWN

On these streets I am a stranger

An interloper

A slight tang of awareness

Rippling across an ordinary day.

Perhaps because I am not intimate

With the history of these streets

My ears are vulnerable,

to their stories:

The babble, the songs

The wailing, the screams

A sigh, a whisper

Each reaches out to me

Wraps its insubstantial fingers

Around my throat

Till the shape of words

Erupts in my mind,

Without instrument or voice

melodies

Sway and weave about my feet

Till it is dancing shoes I wear

As I perform all alone here

On these unfamiliar streets

The people I pass are illusory

Disconnected images

Emerging out of the unknown

Then melting away

beyond the knowable

I wander these streets

As if in a dream

Thought flowing into thought

Not bound by logic’s limits

The morning is reluctant

To leave off dreaming

And I have been caught

Within the surreality

Of its waking