The call to prayer seeps
no start no end as if
unearthed from deep within
a mind. So the line
between self and city thins,
as fluid as the Bosphorous
that sliver between two seas.
Squint! See the Ottoman hordes on roof
tops between a ewer and a canonball or
is that a fleet of turbine vents
turning. Time stutter steps and water
— boundary or bridge?
Hello from Istanbul! D and I are doing some traveling in Türkiye for the next week+. Every time we go on a international trip that involves seeing and doing new things, we like to catalog it on a little blog/journal thing. It’s mostly for us so we can remember small details and it makes us laugh years later. Sometimes it’s more about the food, sometimes the people, sometimes the sights, etc. Here’s the first post from Istanbul. Feel free to check in on the site from time to time if you want to see what we’re seeing. We’ll put something out every few days.
I’m struck by Istanbul’s near constant sense of merge and split - cultures, buildings, old/new, land, etc. A few times a day there is the call to prayer which echoes throughout the entire city, one of the moments of merging everyone in a shared experience. From where we’re staying the sounds bounce around the city like a siren. That is ultimately the spark for this poem and rather than read the poem here’s a little video of what it sounded like while we were looking at the Blue Mosque. It’s particularly striking in non-religious spaces.
Many indigenous groups in the U.S. view water as a body that connects separated lands rather than a body that divides them.
With gratitude,