Leaving the Island

Another ride,
another venture,
sunrise from another shore.
Goodbye beaches of shell and tide,
goodbye caminatas on dirt roads
and skittish Brahmins in the night.
Goodbye hills and trails and people
Joyful people.
More to live on in the memory.
On to the city, the mountains, the fields,
on to the unknown
To ideas and connections yet unfurled,
to another day
another month
of learning
living
discovery.

NEWS FLASH: An Over-Abundance of Abejones

Altamira, Biolley. Dozens more abejones sacrificed their lives last night in the pursuit of light, or so it appears. Still more lay helpless on their backs this orning, alive but incapable of regaining footholds. Likely due to the unusual amount of rain this dry season, one local speculates, entire populations of the large, brown beetles emerge confused from the earth each day, doubtless wondering what happened to the colder air of the more familiar month of May. Grace Montoya said, "The may beetles entangle themselves in your hair, and you have to keep a sharp watch on your food." Can humans and abejones coexist peacefully, or do we have a problem on our hands, or rather on our counters? As the bodies of these "fearless fools" accumulate on our doorsteps, only time will tell.

the audience

Today
as dusk came creeping,
I saw a twinkling star
though a window in the fingers
of a tree above me.
Then I saw a second
a third
a fourth
and I thought,
Here I am
the audience
of the audience
of the universe.

a greater glimpse

With the warm radiance of sunset to the West and the full, white moon rising in the East, I love the mountains and the water, and think of this third globe whose ocean we're riding on in a fiberglass hull with an outboard motor as we bask in her beauty. And I realize that's all I can do. I love her and the sun and the moon and yet I don't really know her, and I can't say that the sun tells me the time of day, or that I live by the cycles of the moon. As I walk over her squishy, life-bearing mud to the shore, on my thick rubber soles, I can't say that I feel herbeat beneath my feet. Maybe I've felt it once or twice, but I can't say that I really know her. I feel harshly in these moments a painful separation from the real force of life, as I witness Gaia's turning as it happens every day. And I think that what I've known as God--in the moments on mountaintops, in treetops, and by riversides when I'm totally lost in life and its mystery--is only a glimpse, a slight, ever-so-generous glimpse, of that force. I hope someday I'll know her, I'll feel her fully and my life will revolve around her and depend upon her. It might start with more of those glimpses, gaining frequency and strength, but someday, the separation will be less and less, and no more. Someday, my life will be her life, and your life too. My place will be rocks and trees and fresh water, not a house or a school or a town, and I will know my place and those who share it, and I will know how my place fits within its place, and how I fit within it.

monkey friends

Oh, I wish I was a monkey. To wrap my tail around the finger of a tree and tiptoe along its forearms, up there in the wind and the weather, swaying, swinging. Come down and hang with me in my hammock. I see you eyeing it, or me. But where did you go, so soon? So far, so quickly. Talk to me again. I wish I was you.