I wake to an imagined

sound: wooden blind

cords, with their little plastic

bells, lifting and slapping gently

against the sills

in a sturdy breeze. As if I were

waking in my childhood bed,

five stories above

the New York streets, windows opened

to the regions of

the upper air, air of laundered

freshness, air with the sea

in it.

                    Here, halfway around

the world in an ancient desert

city where green glints of minarets

stipple the night sky, I am awakening

to thin white drapes which inhale-fill

with light-and exhale the still

cool air, billow over open

roof-patio doors, subside,

my ears tranced by the after-vibration

of the muezzin's call, the clear

tinkling of a few morning

dishes. I am blanketed again

in sums of rich

privacies-theirs whose tea steeps

in a large jar on an adjacent roof,

theirs who grow mint and cumin in small pots

on a ledge-while I lodge

deliciously in the privacy

of my own quiet body, the white

billowing draped inhaling, filling

with light, sailing me through

all my morning cities.

Judy Kronenfeld (CA)  is the author of one book and one chapbook of poetry, the most recent being Disappeared Down Darks Wells, and Still Falling (The Inevitable Press, 2000).