Let down, unwound, sun burnt, and tired.
On the short ride to the airstrip we stop to pick up friends.
On the island everyone is a friend.
“Flamingo or Le Air?”
A smile and a name is all I need.
No identification is requested, no boarding pass issued.
On the island everyone is a friend.
The plane comes out of the haze and drops through the low sun.
Hanging on the horizon.
As it lands, I take the small book I always carry.
My personal Tao te Ching.
“Stone and Sky”, by the poet Larry Gavin.
It falls open to page twenty-two.
“Where the Bones”
I begin to read it again, wondering if I’ll divine a new meaning from the words.
Where the bones come out of the earth,
at the intersection of longing and desire;
they don’t look like bones at all at first,
but on closer examination they measure
the stories we hope to tell in some future.
They embolden lightness like leaves
tossed by wind against sunshine.
Where bones come out of the earth,
all the stories are possible. All characters
are you – like in a dream. Flesh is not
necessary for the imagination. It is superfluous.
It is unintended like a sudden rain –
the accident of atmosphere – the way
water seeks a path of least resistance
down the valley. An accident too, of gravity
and whiteness, and the dark passages
where bones come out of the earth,
and sing bone songs, hard, and strong, and bright.
I imagine Larry sitting next to me.
We are hung over, unwound, sun burnt, and tired.
He stands to leave, and I am alone, and the engine of the plane I haven’t heard, stops, and the woman who didn’t ask for my I.D. or give me a boarding pass smiles.
Does she know that I’m the only one leaving who wants to stay?
