torn away

I'm watching a stupid movie on this Boeing 757 and reading the words on the T-shirts walking the aisle and it hits me, tears and all. I'm going back to the U.S. It's hitting me square in the face but I just can't believe it. How did this happen? Where did these months go? They've gone to my memories, deep down and all over the surface. Please don't let them sink anymore. And why do I cry? Because for all my excitement, I wish it weren't ending. Because I'm flying over ripples of blue, away from those twelve wonderful beings who have so filled my life in this time with things I can hardly comprehend, who have fed my growth with every insight and embrace. Away from them with all they've given me, toward a world of unknown challenges and possibilities. This growth that magnifies and shapes me brings me to big drops on the page, salty and sentimental. The surface of the sea below us reminds me of a wrinkled passion-fruit, all flattened out. My passion remains alive and full, but it might take my soul a good while to catch up this time.

River
rush over me
and heal my wounds.
A friend of ours
had a fight with my skin last week,
and I suffer from it still
but it has taught me to breathe.
And so I breathe.
Water and wind,
sun and sound
fill me,
take me over.
River
rush over me,
heal these wounds.

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.