I ask you
a dozen questions
                             — as expected —
it’s not your words
that hold my attention * 

I ask you
a dozen questions
then forget
            every answer
                           — just the sound of your voice...

I ask you
two dozen questions
tho I forget
a dozen answers
               — your laugh a complete snowfall 

I ask you
a dozen questions
tho I forget
a dozen answers
              a plate crashes to the tiles

I ask you
a dozen questions
tho I lose
all the answers
                 — the river in flood

---

Image: My photo, vacant dressmaker’s shop, Globe Lane, Wollongong. * this line borrowed from Patricia Prime, Eucalypt, 2010, p. 21.

And for music this morning, something from Afrique. Here’s Malian singer and guitarist, Afel Bocoum with his 1999 album Alkibar (youtube), recorded in an abandoned school near Niafunke a small village on the banks of the Niger River. “Alkibar set finger-picked guitar melodies and soulful vocals, in the Sonrai, Fula, and Tamashek languages, to a musical tapestry of lute, monochord njurkle, calabash, spike fiddles, and a three-voiced choir.”