Alvaro

I am looking for a little divine inspiration. 

First Friends

Miss. Scurry, the ever patient listener and herder of frolicking children

Places

Can't leave a place while it's bad.
Means there's too much hidden you need to uncover first.
Can't walk away after an argument.
Too angry still. Been building up too much resentment or guilt or whatever other bullshit you aren't brave enough to admit.
Gotta stick it out. Gotta stay during the awkward silences. Not the golden ones. Not the strolls of the fragrant imagination, but the worries. The ever churning mill of loathing and egotism.
Must wait it out.
Gotta let the sands even after a rough night of choppy seas.
It will even out.
You don't always have to run crooked.

What about the places that never got mean?
That never showed you fear or fatigue.
What about the company that always flowed smoothly.
Calmly, slowly.
It's hard to leave.
It's comfortable here.
I'm comfortable here.

He's tying his tie.
All ready.
Last candles burning behind us.
We'll walk upon the cobbles looking down at our feet.
Wouldn't want to roll an ankle.
Wouldn't want to get hurt. 

Come, my friends,

photograph courtesy of V.Castillo

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

Alfred Lord Tennyson Ulysses

If its Tuesday, it must be Belgium

It's time for jumping jacks and a cabbage salad.

Scotland is in my future. 

Guilo the Hospitable

It would take a cafe band and some fresh iced tea to retell the mystical journey that was Brava.
I will try my best without the tea.

We arrived by ship at midnight.
Four of us climbed into the back of a pick-up truck with port crew and a mattress held between our knees. 

The days sped past in the beds of half-backs and cement trucks. 

Daylight tramps were hyphenated by sleep atop the staircase of an abandoned Red Cross, in an ATM bureau and in the den of a ferry guard named Guilo. Thunder and business hours kept our dreams well tailored.

We bathed in Feijon d'Agua, natural pools cozied into the rocks on the Western shore.

The grotto floors were spotted with fossils and ink-black urchins. 

We escaped the current with only the slightest surface wound, quickly healed by local Grog. 

Fresh sugar cane and yeast borned the mist settling from the hills and rained into tiny coconut skin cups. 

Krioli kindnesses spill smoothly under such cloud covering. 

We ran and rested, laughed and prayed.

Cold beers rose cold sunrises and a ferry carried us away from the fora.

Adieus bid we each turned in our directions and scratched the mounds left by mosquitos all the way home.

Adventure lingers stale upon my breath as I yawn and fall into another island slumber, pricked by sunburn and sprite.

photographs courtesy of C.Bach

Redemption Song

Trekking up Pico de Fogo is my Ngarahoe redemption.

One perfectly conical volcano for another.

MmmmMm, the sharp sour smell of Sulfur steaming through the cracks at the summit.

And it only took three years to get to the top.

                        photographs courtesy of C.Bach 

Repose

Shrouded grey clouds permit the workings of a rainy day.
Long legs bent behind me as I lay limply upon the couch, soaking in the late summer romance of a novel set in the mountains of Iowa.

A travel photographer pulls into a long dirt driveway to ask the farmer's wife for directions.

His keen eye and slender body find a forgotten woman.

Pages turn themselves. The mind dressed in a long floral skirt runs through pastures of high grass.

I rub the top of my feet together and rest my chin into the other palm.

A green pick-up truck follows the spine of rural byways to covered bridges and reddish sunrise streams. Painted scenes are captured by wide lenses.

My head becomes heavy and I find myself reading sentences twice. I fold the book and rest my cheek upon the sleeve of crossed arms.

I can hear the neighbors and their washing boards, the sea beaten and swirled in the rocky coves below the windows. The walls are open windows.

Thick, sweet air washes into the room and over me.

The heaviness of late morning lifts though the book stays closed and limp.

The subtle beauty of bare footsteps lead me across the tiled floor toward the misty open windows.

I lean upon the sill scanning the grace and aching romance of the ocean.

I sigh the sigh of gratitude and fall softly back into the doorway of the barn on RR 2 in old Madison County, Iowa.

Pensao Casa Monte Amarelo, Cha das Caldeiras

White ceiling paint cracks.

Peonies and pansies tied in bows upon the bedspread draw from the femme fatigue sprawled upon the pillows.

Two candlesticks burn in ice-cream goblets.

Pink shadows slip into soft whispered stories of a childhood in a coastal county, of a bamboo raft built for one eager Panda.

Doors and frosted windows detailed with smooth curves of molding.

Fast friends and old friends fill the room with laughter. Some of the twilight mirth echoes down the hall.

A breakfast banquet sits in the corner freshly coated with the paint not wasted on the ceiling.

This time tomorrow

Where will we be?
On a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea:
-The Kinks

Boa noite e sonhos cor de rosa; xx

Uva

In the beginning there was a little purple grape.
She hung more or less happily from her vine.
Each day the sun grew stronger and she became darker, sweeter.
As the winds blew south, she moved south, to Sinai.
There she found herself alone and afraid.
She was an American grape, you see.
American grapes are told to be afraid of turbans and the dark skinned men who wear them.
She stayed in her hut on the shore of the Red Sea and cowered.
After two days her fear had melted and dripped away and she felt free.
She returned to the sun and again grew darker, sweeter.

This little purple grape soon heard a call from a bright red tomato in the north.
She remembers this tomato from the nursery.
They were seeds together. Fed by the same university. Later sent off seperately into the fields.
The tomato promised adventure and good company.
North she went, that little purple grape. Always a sucker for fine conversation.
Their vines interlaced and together they grew darker, sweeter in the sun.
They set their moveable roots down into the land of Jordan.
The red sand was very hospitable, Always offering sugared Sage tea.
The tomato grew very fast, and the little grape was much slower.
They kept themselves at a reasonable pace and enjoyed the sun together very much.
Eventually he ripened, big and red, and found himself at a market in Jerusalem.

Alone again, this little purple grape.
She overheard some other grapes talking in a foreign but familiar tongue.
They mentioned some grapes that had been put into bottles and kept for a very long time.
This intrigued the little grape. What answers must lie at the bottom of these bottles!
She went to find out for herself.
After winding through many valleys on the kindness of many vines, the little purple grape landed softly in Madrid.
The people in Madrid eat a lot of Ham, she noticed. And they talk very quickly.
Luckily, the little purple grape did not come for conversation.
It started to rain and the little grape grew juicy.
She slipped along the cobbled streets and found a place with many, many bottles and many, many people eating ham.

A very tall glass with a very thin stem sat down beside her.
She sat up nice and straight and looked as if she was thinking very serious thoughts.
The glass was filled and introduced the little purple grape to several delicate secrets.
The little purple grape enjoyed this very much. She emptied the glass and her thoughts did not seem so serious.
Her cheeks became red and she slipped off into the streets.
She filled herself with music and cheese and fell asleep happily.

Soon she will visit Lisboa, where there are even more grapes in even more bottles.
Some of the grapes are enriched. They are sipped out of small glasses and this makes them fancy.
Soon after the little purple grape will sail south to Africa. Here there are many things that are dark and sweet.
She will have a lot of time to ripen in the sun and will assuredly grow deep and purple.

The future of this little grape is uncertain.
She thinks she would like to grow old and wrinkle.
Raisins are very nice, aren´t they?

If Pleasure be Happiness

Photo courtesy of J. Katz

It is midnight

It is midnight in Madrid.
The streets are greyed
by sleeping shop windows
and rain.