Ann E. Michael
Ann E. Michael writes and gardens. She maintains a pretty-much weekly blog at www.annemichael.blog. Her most recent collection of poetry, Abundance/Diminishment, was published in 2024.
Approaching Estación de Autobuses, Murcia, Spain
From a vantage point slightly above
their heads, I watch old men in kurtas,
young men flaunting sleek fashions,
women in niqabs—a few—and harried
mothers dressed in lavender, pink, gray.
Some women let their long black
ponytails loose, others wear hijabs.
Halal stands, teterías, small shops
selling cosmetics, sunglasses, henna,
toothpaste, SIM cards, diapers, bread.
Families push through densely-peopled
streets, little boys in embroidered
taqiyah, their sisters in pink flip-flops,
awkward, scurrying to keep up.
How this bus makes any progress
through the throng—no sidewalks
in el Albaicín—I can’t fathom.
Scarves swirl on racks, colorful
dancers in the urban wind-tunnel that
is Calle Almenara. Arabic and Spanish
billboards, posters, business signs—
mostly, the struggle of crowds that
keep the poorer parts of town so vital.
I long to walk the narrow street full
of low-rent entrepreneurs, taxi drivers,
women buying lamb and rice, everyone
sweating in summer’s heat. Behind tinted
windows, in the air-conditioned bus,
Murcia swarms ceaselessly, without me.
