The Year of Summer

You came down from the mountains to the shore with your father’s voice ringing in your ears, saying over and over again the call to prayer.

The stairs leading down to the water are cracked and marked by awakening.

Awakening in the south the morning sun shines lemon yellow for eleven months, the leaves of the trees telling a book of eleven dreams.

In this book, the sky is sometimes lavender. In this book are colors you have never seen before.

In this book is the taste of white peach.

The blue-black sea turns milky under the noon-sun.

In the twelfth dream your father whispers your name into each of your folded ears.

In the year of summer you came south into a city of yellow and white, and what was told of this city was told in trees, and then in leaves, and then in light.