Category: Travels

Boom boom hurrah,
it’s the 8th of July
in Lauzun, France!

which means fireworks,
the grill, lights, music,
and dancing in the sun
and in the night;

global style, banging out Gangnam
style, they welcomed me home,
a stranger in a small town.

A small green town,
celebrating today into tomorrow
on a midsummer night
throws one hell of a party.

And I can’t help but wonder:
why don’t Americans also
make one big circle
and dance together
as one big circle?

All ages together:
altogether communing
on a warm summer night.

in a small town,
is dedicated to Christ:
everyone drinking
and eating all day

and everyone drinking
and dancing all night;

the fiesta, in a small town,
transformed into a forest–

it’s covered in leaves.

How sweet the soft blue
dawn after a sleepless
night, restless:

a tidy breakfast, eggs,
fruit and coffee, then
cleaning the kitchen
clean dishes, clean
as the dawn.

Day is night
and night is day;
when to sleep
and when to eat
my body cannot say.

I sit on the roof,
small hours bloated
to fullness,
full like the bed full
of dust that I lay in,
hours, restless:
the dark Portugal night.

From where I sit,
high altitude, earth
must be smaller
than I’m accustomed to:
looking out the cabin window.

Yet how vast! As if blanketed
by the shadow of the moon, such land,
such seas stretch before me
in black uncertainty, shining
vaguely with a promise: something
new, something unknown.

Hear! I meet the warble
of dawns coming wings,
the thrumming of the jets,
the monotonous engine.
I come to meet this darkness
squarely, plainly view both
the plain and the extraordinary,
and still I look forward
to coming home..