The boatman winked
as she lifted the gypsy hem of her skirt,
he shaped a complicit smile
as the first of her elegant stilettoed heels
tapped upon the gangway,
and moulding the tautness of her caramel thighs
against the Moroccan shades
of the beckoning divan,
she nodded acknowledgement
to the welcoming smiles.

Sighs rippled over water’s lap
heartbeats synchronized with stellar pulsation,
a frequency, a vibration of esoteric dimension.

When anchor fell
the shoreman had long since left
returning to the material reality
of land lovers’ brickland,
the four walls, ceilings and floors
of their starless night.

And as the wind lent itself
to the lateen sails
the felucca slipped, silent and slick,
its silhouetted figures
bathing naked in starlight.