Tired Camels in Cold Morocco
by Catarina Broccolino
In the middle of nowhere, in the heart
of the Agafay, I choked
on nothing & fixated on the tea-stained plateaus.
The camels did not notice the men passing by,
boredom-stricken, dirty
& gold, in a line. They did
not have names, at least not names I knew.
My aggravated illness did not stop me.
Something inherited from my father, my
mother calls “stubborn.” My will,
eager for rush, remembers the shake
in my belly & the tightness in my legs.
In dewless morning, weak under cloth,
a one-humped Arabian stared me down,
eyes ashed with the charcoal of age.
The feeble beast was where he always stood, or
at least, where I’d always seen him, statue dumb
with empty purpose, where there is no
significance of time, it is always today.
He swayed adolescent
in the breeze & sighed heavy breaths,
thoughtless, lost in timeless time, dreaming
of becoming a mustang. Even the brothers & sisters beside him
did not seem to care that they are the Dromedary,
the ones depicted in Persian reliefs, symbols
of wealth, the four legs that carried the
Magi to meet Christ.