L'aura del Campo

Three more Costa Rica pieces: from Tilarán, Santa María.

No. I can't promise I'll keep posting prose and poetry here. I wish I could. So much catching up to do.

At least I'm still writing almost daily in my "active" blog.

What remains lost

Sugar cane rustles in a gentle breeze. Papaya holds tight to it's leaf-scarred pole. Nary a cloud passes over the coffee-clad hills. A hummingbird passes through, a mere ripple in the quiet pool of lost thoughts.

One could search for oneself here, perchance find what was lost. Long ago these hills were the home of quetzals, now cows moo and coffee flowers in neat fragrant rows.

Harvest time and the town fills with indigenous people, foreign to this place. After two centuries of growing these grains of gold, little flows to the pockets of the pickers. Hired because the sons of the landowners have flown to New Jersey for better pickings (strange birds that fly north to the cold; it's the cold hard dollar they seek) they add color and hope that the harvest will be good.

Here the breeze is soft, the people gentle, hills quiet. Will the sons come back in search of what they have lost? A green more alive than the greenback awaits them under skies of un-polluted blue.

8.enero.2013, Santa María de Dota.

In the balance between horns

Last day of the bull-ring. Bulls always win. Sometimes the risk pays-off for the men and boys that taunt them The crowds cheer for those who lose their wits. Life sits in the balance between horns. I watch at a distance.

There's no risk when visiting this village of wide streets and level sidewalks. Even the thieves have names they are known by. Signs on the corners tell me I'm here at the corner of Calle 0 and Avenida 0. Church bells summon the vesper hour, kiss the clouds racing towards the sunset, bid goodbye.

The crowd makes noise as the bull is surrounded. Sun sets, surrendering us to the night.

6.enero.2013, Tilarán (but feels like Santa Cruz).

Letter to Gare from Tilarán's park

Winds race through here, scatter fronds and limbs too weak to hold on. Parrots chatter in pairs, shelter in pines. I ponder alone on this bench.

Winds cannot clear what that they cannot enter. In my mind you are here, huddled in the pine or racing with the wind. Those windmills in the distance know your breath, this sunset your smile. It's passing now with your setting glow.

I press my back to the bench, wonder whether I too will be blown to where trees point. They lean, flap their boughs like flags. They do not answer my thoughts. Too focused on holding on, like me, they refuse to let go.

The Angelus summons the village to its pews. I rest on my bench. The sermon of the parrots spills forth as unintelligible as Latin. The wind speaks my name over and over, bidding me follow.

I dare not listen.

6.enero 2013, Tilarán.

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