"smoke and mirrors"

wicker basket

in the old times these giant wicker baskets were sold to the farmers in the valley

for the amount of corn on the cob they could hold once full -

resemblance

walnut shells

isn't it so, that

when a sharp knife
is wedged

at the soft tip of a walnut-

 shell splits open with ease

to be scooped out

and sate a savage need

then the hollow half-
shells fill quick 
with palpable nothingness

an emptied heart

tossed in the stove

to feed the fire

tools of the trade

grandparents

the only vista she had ever known while he traveled the seas -

October moon

There is not an apple

left in this apple tree

to pick by hand

and throw at you

but the full Moon

of mid-October ― rising
sun-ripe
delirious

stones of sacred engagement

_ _ _ 

"what is not here"

i start out on this road, 

call it love or emptiness. 

i only know what's not here.

resentment seeds, backscratching greed, 

worrying about outcome, fear of people.

when a bird gets free, 

it does not go back for remnants 

left on the bottom of the cage.

close by, i'm rain. far off, 

a cloud of fire. i seem restless, 

but I am deeply at ease.

branches tremble. the roots are still. 

i am a universe in a handful of dirt, 

whole when totally demolished.

talk about choices does not apply to me. 

while intelligence considers options, 

i am somewhere lost in the wind. - Rumi

with love

                                                             майка -

the road

Crocus act (Olivia Gunning Bennani)

Harvesting saffron deep in the Atlas Mountains

"Khadouj, who believes she is at least 70 years old, can still touch her toes. Right now she's bent double, elbow-deep in a spray of purple crocuses. Showing half a mouthful of teeth in a sun-scorched, plumpish face with impressive furrows, Khadouj is smiling. She's happy because the annual saffron harvest has begun, providing much-needed employment for residents of Tnine de I'Ourika, a crumbling Berber village in one of the valleys of Marocco's Atlas Mountains.

During the three-week harvest, dozens of women from the community will reap 800,000 crocuses, extracting about 6 kilograms of the precious strands of saffron, a spice that can fetch up to $12 per gram. Khadouj and her workmates each earn about $4 per day.

Picking begins at daybreak, when the petals are still closed; inside are the filament-like structures called stigmas that, when dried, are known as saffron. "By 9 a.m. it's over," explains farm manager Mohammed Mador, as he ambles through gardens bursting with aromatic plants beneath olive and citrus trees. "Once the flower opens, the stigmas will be damaged by the sun."

The heaps of flowers are then taken aside and, one by one, the stigmas are extracted, a task seen as woman's work - ostensibly because their hands are daintier. "It takes 40 women to harvest one hectare of flowers and extract the three filaments from each flower," Mador says.

Back in the crocus patch, Khadouj is upright, holding her back; when asked if it aches, she shrugs. Her rugged hands reflect a lifetime of dough-kneading and clothes-scrubbing. Soon Khadouj is bent over again, as she and the others get on with the job in a gust of chatter and song.

- by Olivia Gunning Bennani

siblings

"my soul is an empty carousel at sunset" - Pablo Neruda

starting fire

they call it a river