I remember the days you watched women,

beautiful women, says Francis. Their own

eyes turned down softly to words on pages

in grand books you imagined you, yourself,

had written, or staring dreamlike out windows

toward destinations beyond these rusted tracks.

Perhaps they were thinking of you, compelling

memory of sangria and Galician guitars, strolling

through moonlit plazas and sitting on lips of lush

Moroccan fountains where Rumi himself sat

with Rabia, David, Muhammed, and Jesus and

first wrote words of wine and love and music.

But now you notice the children, how they seek

a mother’s silent permission to look back at an

old man smiling, making silly faces, trying too

hard to please, to get attention, a smile or shy

tuck of the head into the same sheltering breasts

which inspired the greatest book you never wrote.

David Dixon is a physician, poet, and musician who lives and practices in the foothills of North Carolina. His work has appeared in Rock & Sling, The Northern Virginia Review, Connecticut River Review, Bear Paw Arts Journal, The Greensboro Review, Atlanta Review and elsewhere. He is the author of The Scattering of Saints (Hermit Feathers Press, 2022).