duende

When the sun cooks the morning to afternoon, and a hot Sirocco wind has the beach bodies sprawled across their towels (humped flesh dunes of submission), we turn inwards to the dappled paths among pine and date palm.
There secret greenery writes its century old stories in flowing fronds of sun shadow script and thin needle italics across the dust of the stepping stones we walk upon. A Moorish curve, a Christian crossing. Pattern and repetition swaying in an African wind.

The miracle of a clear water fountain spouting cadences of fever dreams.

Then a peacock. A flamenco fan unfurling duende. The sparkling promise of blue and green. Patterns god awesome.
It lets out a high cry, a gypsy ballad of deep sorrow and dislocation, a devotional song finding the curve and matrix of Islam in the architecture. Its display feathers are gently captured in the same air moving among the trees. A sway of place in the unremitting sun. In the answering blood throb of my leg. This place of Islamic genius. Of Catholic martyrs. Selfie-stickers. Its energy sap drawn from the elemental furnace millenia deep and dry and green and wanting of water.
I sit and rest in the shade watching the peacock show off. Everything is suddenly present. Build me a dream made of water and gardens. Let me live in the dry fire alabaster walls. For we will build shadows for ourselves and dine.
The peacock snaps shut its fan. It is time to go. Time to take my heat onwards.