Saltana the Singer in Porto, Portugal
by Marianne Peel  

They can’t help moving their feet
to his music. A microphone
and a reverb machine
and there is magic in motion.
Obrigando. Thank you.
A child puts his ear to the speaker.
A woman in a wheelchair
spins circles around the singing man.
They are an orchestra
of belonging, here on the sun-slick pavement.
Everyone in this water-side restaurant
lifts their glass of Porto wine.
Applause rattles the limestone cobblestones.
No one can keep from singing.
Leonard Cohen’s Halleluiah
in Portuguese. Communication
across oceans, across where the river bends.
A man wearing a fedora asks me,
Where are you from?
I raise my glass and say:
Here.  I am from here.