Nomad Poem

written in Fez, Morocco by the Storytellers at Cafe Clock: Mohammad Mukhalis, master storyteller and teacher, Brahim, Hassan, and Kerry

This is the beginning of a story
A story of the soul and a story of the body
The story of the rising sun and the story of the ripening moon

There is a woman living inside the tree (which is the family)
She is not happy where she is living
She is thinking of being separated and she is already separated
She desires independence yet she already has her independence

She is looking for her own land but she only dreams about the place
She doesn’t know the place she wants to reach or the road to take to it

One day, in a very fertile land that you can only reach if you are smart enough,
a new road appeared.
A road so long that your food could run out but still the road will not end
A road so hard to reach that you are taking your chances to find it and maybe going nowhere
A road so strange that every now and then the road appears differently
For the road you take today will never take you back home again.

The woman wanders this land all through the day, searching for the road.
But at night, in the haunting fog,
she comes back to the forest and she becomes a key,
fitting her body into the keyhole in the tree.
And so when she goes into the tree which is her home
she enters into another world.
And on the other side it is even worse than this enchanted forest
She enters into something deep and dark and scary.

And this is just the beginning.

Bleak Tree

written in Sefrou, Morocco, by Pepper, Katy, Linda, Simon

After too many tormented years,
they answer her plea for salvation from familial improprieties.
They bury her within the apparent warmth of a tree
and send it upstream on a starry night.

It is cold outside, snowing maybe.
The roots stretch toward the bank but cannot reach it,
and so the weathered body of the trunk drifts into the unknown.

Her body now forms a keyhole to another world,
human tumblers in the lock,
and there is not room to turn around.
The snow makes a soft sound, slow with purpose, on the faraway tree.

And she is grateful to be free.