CAMP OUTSIDE TANGIERS 1970

A BOY AND GIRL IN A BASE CAMP OUTSIDE TANGIERS IN 1970

The trip from Tangiers
to our base camp
was made in yellow
converted army trucks
probably WW2.

30 of us sat
facing the wind,
faces frozen
in the process.

I thought of life
after death, if there
one and hoped
there was.

When we stopped
at the base camp,
we went in the cafe
at the camp
for coffee or tea
or coke or maybe
something stronger
until our faces unfroze.

Miriam who had sat
next to me in
the seemingly death ride
talked through stiff lips:
that was some ride,
she said,
my hand got
frozen to yours.

I rubbed her hands
with mine;
we sipped
our coffees.

She talked of home
and her parents
and university;
I spoke of music
and Kant,
all the while studying
her small, but neat breasts,
(which I had see before
but only in the darkness
of our tents).

Who are you
sharing with?
I asked.

Still the quiet girl
I was with, but
she's gone off
the ex-army guy
she told me as he
talked non stop
of his mother
and her new partner
and how he hated him;
who are you with?
She said.

I'm with Bill now
he's ok, good laugh,
I said.

Where's ex army?
She said.

Went off and shared
with someone else,
I said.

After that we went
and found our tents,
separated male from females
by a narrow path.

Have you seen the bogs?
Bill said,
they're just
two bricks
in a walled off area;
the girls won't
like that
standing on
two fecking bricks.

He laughed,
and we unzipped
our tent, and we put
our suitcases in,
and put out
our sleeping bags
and lay down,
looking at the top
of the tent.

And there's fecking
scorpions they say,
and maybe big
fecking spiders,
so if you hear
screams
the girls have
found them,
he said smiling;
they can see
my snake any time.

I later saw Miriam
in the bar
and she moaned
about the bogs too
but the showers
are ok,
she said,
but a bit primitive.

She'd showered,
and was tip-top,
she'd come share,
(if Bill was
not there)
she said,
my tent
and camp bed.