Avellanes Afternoon

Avellanes Afternoon

Dark and Hot,

The blur of the swirling fan greets me with columns of wind cooling, oozing sweat
down to a simmer. A Popagallo is blowing and the maned lion marches through the trees, bending every branch, roaring out its power while prancing by the cabana.
Summertime, the netting across the jalousies ripples by, I lie motionless.

It must be good by now.

Motion; it moved, the dark capped room is moving, its occupants, save one, in daily ritual. The dark spot on the ceiling loops by and plucks one out of the never ending caisson, and retracts itself to the start. Geckos dart out and the clawed sound from the attic, pulling itself slowly across the floor above my ceiling breaks the growing cancer of silence. Slowly it creeps, the sharp claws piercing the soft wood, the sharp marked ones. I can no longer move.

The other presence in the room never leaves, day or night. It sweeps across the room all day, only to move back across by night. It lumbers clumsily, but cannot be escaped. It is encompassing. Like God, is everywhere, all the time, never changes , never leaves, always on you, always pressing in, always in control. Perhaps it is God.

I try to move but I am nailed to my coffin , my brain sends the message, but the presence intercepts and destroys.

Through small windows near the ceiling the tropical sun rushes in like fire, leaping and darting across the nettings blown out by steady winds. No sound; the lion is moving again, breathing across the room , moving the heat of his heart, gradually,
barely perceptible his nostrils flare.

Does anything change, I mean really change? The tropical sun has borne its weight upon this land since the ancient volcanoes roared them into existence. Was that change? Or just the cycle one more time? The sun is numbing, a mental Novocain, applied across this land to all its inhabitants.
I no longer can hold my eyes open.

The sun is bright, the room is shade, the afternoon barely progresses, inching along on its belly, held close to the molten earth.

My bed is damp, wet, but quickly dries as He breathes again,

It must be good by now.

I turn and embrace the dark, leaving the ageless afternoon to the eternal heat, and dream once more of the green iguana…

Surfnrg