Holiday Flotilla (Chaled Res In His Studio, Oct.14) Poem by Denis Mair

We are watching a holiday flotilla on the Nile

each banner and ribbon flaunts itself on the current

each brush stroke ready for use in a thousand pictures

all possible pictures come here to cast their nets

all pictures get carried off on sparkling wavelets

melody dissolves in a wild rhapsody

for love it is a time to ride on frenzy

before it can settle into patient searching

but now other banners want their holiday

a mortal struggle will have its flowering

a thousand living transactions are paid in blood

there is a murky zone that recalls dark headwaters

and mud recycles stains of beastly teeth

yet love must have its say, in a zone that includes them,

where radiance embraces the local idioms of flowers.