A CALL
by Llyn Clague
I jerk awake, cockeyed
with jet lag, in a bedroom cubicle
in a giga-story high-rise
in gigantic, Islamic Jakarta.
P.m. as a.m., the clock
upside down, the space
strange, my senses click
off-kilter, lacking purchase.
Abruptly a loudspeaker erupts,
a cry, a call, a prayer
blaring over low roof tops,
penetrating every tower.
Wailing, warbling, crooning
Qu’uranic verses in Arabic
archaic, iconic, their meaning
lost to natives and me.
It goes quiet, silence abruptly
ballooning against the towers;
again erupts, with the power
of the prophet’s own words.
A cry, a call, seeming
to come from afar — out there,
in mid-air, beyond the window,
yet interior as prayer.
A cry I, jerked awake,
jarred out of character,
find eerily attractive,
upside down in Jakarta.
Copyright © 2016 by Llyn Clague.