A Night in Camargue

It wasn’t the wind
through bending bamboo
on the brackish,
delta marshes;
more like a psaltery –
singing, sweet and low

and it wasn’t
the rain, trickling
from an old, tin roof
we heard, but mandolins...

nor was it the thrum
of a hundred wild,
white horses – hooves
pounding the ground,
but as many guitars
strumming
a cantabile beat

nor the sighs from fields
of waving flax, grew
all around. It was
the blues on a sax.

No more was it
the swish of silken skirt
as it whispered to the floor
by those rosebud toes,
but a faint feathering
of drums...

the moon – dangling
from a lilac tree
calling the tune;
‘Mood Indigo’
they played...
the night
the stars,
naked,
danced.