FULL CIRCLING

‘What wisdom is there in a hunter setting traps in the form of poems?’  (Nasser Rabah)
    
  Partial List of Panzoncito’s Favorite Foods:

Silence, City chaos, 
Ice Cream with Caramel Sauce (hot)
Tree-lined streets, Strong coffee with cream, Front porches, Giggling children, 
Mountain lake high in the Sierras, 
His beautiful girlfriend Maureen,
Playing with paints on big canvases, Homemade soup (plenty of vegetables),
Meandering conversation, 
Volcanoes (dormant and erupting), Discovering a new poet,
Origins of words and language itself, 
Desert boots, The Great Lakes,
Hiking off trail, First baseball mitt, etc. etc.

Panzoncito’s not left the park for hours, people-watching has him entranced. A garden of lilacs, roses and yew trees. Kids on scooters, couples wrapped around each other at the fountain. Memories long past, parents long dead, pyramids in Mexico, ice cream in Uruapan, waterfalls near the market percolate in quiet. A volcano called Colima, that morning of lightning bolts and full moon bursting from and over its holy crater. Packing the tent with great haste to scurry off the erupting mountain to safety. Seeing the Louvre for the first time, standing in a small courtyard in light rain. Surprised as he weeps with joy, ‘I’m actually here in Paris in November’, this place he believed never for him. The city here so alive, astonishing and scary, rises around and above him, there’s music weaving the day into something unclear and compelling. His favorite foods nourish and sustain like fresh air after a summer rain, like flying that kite on wet Oregon sand--a day of such gladness decades ago, soaring high, laughing like the wind with his two year old daughter. Panzoncito is straddling realms past and future within this bowl of easy presence as his lips fill with recognition of a moment worth savoring. He stretches both arms and stands, bows slowly smiling with skyscrapers, people and the garden, strolling towards the train for home. A wrinkled man in the subway wearing shabby overalls cradles a silver saxophone and croons:

“If your soul lounges
in the birdbath
who will join
what remains
after rainfall?”