The Empty Playground

     by Zeina Hashem Beck

11 PM. A time

fit for solitude and an abandoned

swing, an abandoned song.

I had forgotten

the simplicity of it.

To rise and sink and rise again, to let

go. Of all the ghosts that

linger. Of all the ghosts. Of

all.

To let idleness in, to let idleness

in. To remember and remember

not. To tilt your head, listen

to your hair touch the sand,

go back, go back, go

nowhere.

The children’s footprints were here

not long ago. Not long ago I

was here. Not long ago.

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Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet with a BA and an MA in English Literature from the American University of Beirut. She taught at universities in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia before finally moving to Bahrain, and soon to Dubai, with her husband and two daughters. She is currently working on publishing a manuscript titled Re-Membering Beirut, and her poems have appeared in the Arabesques Review, the BAP Quarterly, Quiddity, Silk Road, and 34th Parallel.

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© 2011 Zeina Hashem Beck