Wadi Musa
    by Ted Guhl
     

    I sit here on a stone bench      by a road in Wadi Musa, Jordan.
    On a nearby hillside      beneath a stand of mimosa
                  and olive.
    A Bedouin horse flicks      his tail indolently at flies.
    The sound of hammering      drifts down from cement
    and stone houses at     the top of the hill.
    The sunlight     is soft
    air is turning from the cool      breeze of morning
    into the sharp dry heat      of afternoon.
    My mouth is dry and      my back aches
    deeply from the exercise of      yesterday's long hike
    through the ancient      city of Petra
    and the jouncing of the     camel ride back.
    Oddly, my spirit      is quiet
    And thoughts arrive     slowly and easily.
    Tina, my traveling       companion of late,
    is back in the old      city still reveling,
    in the carved rock and      ancient dust of the place.
                     Such solitude.
    Suddenly I sense it      the knowledge of your existence,
    Somewhere      in New Hampshire I assume.
    It is a relief      from some arid part of me
    (an aridity not unlike      the dryness I feel on my tongue.)
    And for some       inexplicable reason
    I feel an urge to write      to you about it.
    "The memory of love      exists in me
    the way the ghosts of that old city exist      in its crumbling facades,"
    I remind my self.         
    Yet that self-whispering     is insufficient.
    I so often      feel,
    in the journey through interior       dry and ancient places,
    a palpable      thirst.
    "You could not      accept its death,"
    my small      voice tells me,
    a      truth that is,
         I suspect,    
    as old and lasting       as these hills I gaze at.
    Why do I write      to you about it?
    I have no desire to lead you to any      ancient ruins of the heart.
    (As much as I believe them to be       terribly beautiful.)
    Nor, do I expect you to be an      oasis to me again -
    not while I contain a      residue of self-pride.
    Yet the desire      to write is there.
    Taking a drink        from my water bottle,
    I whisper a word      or two to Paco and Ray,
    and I feel      them with me
    as surely as I feel the heat      that now begins to surround me
    as I      sit too still.
    They are soothing ghosts      who, like the water, bring respite.
    I suppose      it is that simple, finally.
    I write to you about this      because the telling itself is like a moist bandana
    to      wipe the dust from my face.
    The telling,      like the memory, seems to lift the dryness
    and      provide a momentary reprieve
    from      the hot dust of this day's trek.

    Tamam
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