It’s
so bright and the sun divides itself up across the world with parts to spare.
Blasting about on stucco walls, kissing trellises and vines, flowers and shrubs,
the old motels and the new hotels all. There is a large grocery store, green
and white, and the retired men push the carts for the patrons but aren’t allowed
to take tips. A man, in his thirties, has not yet made the grade and is selling
advertisements or something, - talking, talking, wearing a shirtsleeves and
pants too hot for the weather. All the action is over the way at The Howard
Johnsons. That place evolved to be the mainstay for romance, for parasailing
sign ups, for the pools and beaches so full that it seemed like a carnival,
seemed like the Daytona strip or Lauderdale itself. Still, some old men with
buckets and fishing gear go out to the pier. When the poet is not there, -
(which could be for years, decades, or the better part of an entire lifetime),
he or she must keep the atmosphere in the heart, in the mind, writ large on the
sleeves and souls. That is the job of the artist. One must remember the smell
of suntan lotion, of the freshly pressed and folded towels, of iron-on shirts in
the head shops full also of shells, cards, key-chains. In the distance, off
from the streets, a cargo ship travels across the horizon line. We step around
man-o-war jelly fish, around some seaweed, and walk up to the dry sand where
the impossibly beautiful palms grown and sway. Look how verdant the leaves are,
look how terrene the trunks where an anole sits watching while a bird flies
past. There is up the way a smaller street, adorned of a fire station and
spotted with little motels. I talk to a homeless man on a bike, and his dog has
one eye and ‘balances with the corners,’ says he. Eventually dusk will come and
the lights flicker on. Lights, lights and lights. The ones on the boulevards or
at the old pier, the ones in the restaurants, yellow and soft and if you saw it
you’d say, ‘I want to go in there,’ but you would not know consciously why, it
just being that it has a certain charm, magic,- the way it is all put together.
The sea,- rolling in beyond, little whitecaps turning bigger,- the night’s tide
coming,- and all the reefs and fish, creatures and secrets way out there in the
depths. And what of inner light? What is it? What quality does it have? It’s
invisible, - but is there,-it is not a chakra light, a soul light, or even
really any type of metaphysical light. It is the absence of the self, - and now
the natural grace and God of existence that withholds everything because it simply
is everything, can shine, does shine. And we walk. The cars go past. We might
get an ice-cream cone down the other way because there is a store you know, -
that way too. And we might not. Whatever we choose or seem to choose, it doesn’t
matter, because we can’t lose. We are kissed by the Souce Divine that hid in
the cells and breath and beach and all. We have talked and understood the One
that makes all maladies to run away.
--------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment