star light, star bright

Yes, I am still in Mexico and way overdue for an update — it’s been good, bad and interesting, but mostly good…. and busy. The course wraps up tomorrow, so I’m busily preparing my final presentation — 6 minutes & 40 seconds, pecha kucha style.

Last week, though, the world lost another beautiful warrior woman who, as her loving & grieving husband put it, won her battle with cancer. I didn’t know her well but I still feel the enormous and unfair loss of a brilliant young woman who touched so many people so deeply.

I started composing a poem for her a couple of weeks ago when I heard that she had gone into the hospital in the final stages of palliative care. She was bright & positive right up to the end, and warmly embraced all the love & encouragement sent from her huge circle of friends & admirers. I’m sad that I didn’t have time to send her the poem, so I’m releasing it to the universe instead — knowing she is somewhere out there smiling that brilliant smile of hers.

On Dallas Road

a poem for Emily

The sun rises on Dallas Road like any other day,
dogs loping nose-first into the same breeze
on which the gulls reel, wingtip to wingtip over the water.
In the bay, a small swell breaks the glassy stillness of the ocean,
washes up pebbles polished like precious gems.

Everything moves  – the dogs, the gulls, the breeze, the ocean
even the small polished stones, almost imperceptibly, dancing
the slow dance of the universe, keeping rhythm to the low hum
of everything becoming something else.

Emily walks with her lover, their fingers entwined,
the dogs running ahead, sun rising behind them.
Their long shadows lean toward the future
where land and water and sky intersect.
The dogs don’t need to be told that time circles round,
that in the end everything reconnects. They know something
we don’t know, perhaps a scent on the breeze, a song in the sounds
just out of our reach.

The dogs are always running on Dallas Road, Emily always walking behind,
the sun, her smile, her fingers entwined. Time is nothing, her smile
seems to suggest. I think she knows now what the dogs know.
She holds those secrets safe, waiting while she dances
the slow dance of the universe and watches it all come home:
the dogs running, gulls reeling, waves washing
pebbles like polished gems, everything becoming
something else.

~ February, 2010, Guadalajara, Mexico