Postcard from Taghazout

It’s thinking about being warm, the streets
crisp and dusty from hotter days, sand
the colour of cumin. I shiver
as though in the shade, it’s all cloud.
The locals are inside, only a lone man
selling shell-fish to a deserted stretch
who waves at me on the balcony
and fishermen down on the rocks wrestling
with a net. But except this, nothing stirs,
and like me, even the sea’s half-hearted.

Postcard from Taghazout

Suzanne Conway

published in The North 48, October 2011, ISSN 0269-9885