Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Seeb Road by Night


Not far from the sea
In the north of Oman
A dreary two-lane road
Winds through the gravelled sand flats
Dark and heavily trafficked
Lined by a few scraggly dusty palms
A scene unworthy of a painter’s brush
And yet
And yet
Each night on this darkened stage
A tiny drama worthy of our time

Two boys, all of eight years old
Fan a makeshift charcoal grill
With a piece of cardboard
Grease-laced smoke rises from the grill 
And flames sometimes hover
Above the glowing gray-black coals
Lighting up their earnest faces

Cheap cuts of skewered lamb
Darken and sizzle on the grill
And cars pass by
This little stand
Between two palms
So dark it isn’t seen
So cars pass by

For more than one hour 
I watched them brown the lamb 
And set it aside
Waiting and hoping
Their obscure labor
Would cause a car or two to stop
Their expectations low

Sent out by their parents
Who knows how much they count on 
This hopeless, little stand
Who does their marketing?
Their advertising? 

© Bill Sypher, 2014

"Street Urchins"
oil on canvas
by Karl Witkowski
from Wikimedia Commons


1 comment:

jean said...

Thank you for sharing that very different scene with your readers. Lovely poem!