Casablanca, Backwards

Casablanca, Backwards

Casablanca, Backwards

A plane is taking off in a bank of fog.
It leaves the grainy sky, the mapped Moroccan sand.
It is four months since I’ve seen you. In my hand
the video’s controls point in the air.
“Who were we really and what were we before?”
These things are turning over in my mind

as the plane starts banking down. It comes to land
On a grainy fog bank on a concrete plain.
Casablanca backwards; in this version
Rick Blaine sticks his neck out – really – for no one.
As time does not go by. As history gives way to love –
all the rain of Morocco is raining back to the source!
the rain-soaked note resolving into words.
One tear streams back up Ingrid Bergman’s face.