• Morning Under the Midday Sun (2/12/07, Dubai, UAE)

    It is late morning,
    In a silent house of mourning,
    But outside these walls,
    Life must go on,
    Even in the midst of death.

    And so it does,
    As one can see,
    Looking out,
    On an eleventh floor terrace,
    On the bustling Arab metropolis,
    And city streets below.

    The honking,
    The rushing,
    The beeping,
    The screeching,
    All sounds of a flourishing,
    Modern society,
    Bred of mercantilism and capitalism,
    As this very much modernized place is,
    With its sky scrapers,
    And vast seemingly endless thoroughfare.

    And as I write,
    I look around,
    And see an alternate home,
    A place so different,
    From the compact rooms,
    And closed doors and corridors,
    A place of high ceilings and open space,
    If ever so small in space,
    Then compensation be in the openness,
    And spaciousness.

    And with all that is around me,
    There is one part of this place,
    That truly differs from home in US,
    And that is the pigeons.

    Oh there are pigeons back home,
    Most definitely there are,
    But none really are noticeable,
    Due to their docility,
    But come over here,
    And the pigeons can speak!
    With guttural speech no doubt,
    But speech all the same,
    If you know what they say.

    Some people say,
    This is just escaping the fact,
    The eventual day of reckoning,
    But I am not alone in saying and thinking otherwise,
    That this is not an escape but a diversion,
    To give me strength for the days ahead,
    And the battles in this war I cant help but fight.