Tradition and Reflection

Taking Portugal at a walking pace is comfortable and enlightening. This is a land to be ambled or strolled--and always savoured. Business and progress do not seem as urgent as greetings and cafe conversations. Or the past.

A pilgrim en route to Santiago de Compostela

Our path is enriched by reminders from the histories and legends swirling around St James' remains and the courageous, curious holy people who hoped to understand some of the impossibilities of life. It's sobering to think that at moments we are in their physical footprints. Steps they took without paths, roads, cafes, credit cards, and albergues.  Surely other moments we muse through their metaphysical steps--the journey is ongoing and unpredictable. The journey is being human. 

An immigrant memorialised at Castelo de Neiva

Reflecting on the very long ago and far away saints has a mystic quality. They seemed as much part of the next world then as they are now: living at the liminal edge of this material world and the needs of flesh and bones. Looking at the granite immigrant who represents the thousands fleeing war and oppression, a pattern of desperation-driven sacrifice emerges. No matter that those people fled a mere century ago: their stories parallel ours when we step out the door and have no clue where the day and path will take us; even as they parallel the cloak and staff pilgrims of the Middle Ages. 

We seek. We get distracted. Sometimes we push through. But for me, not often enough. I long for my seeking to be soul-sustaining. For my will to prove true and the way to prevail over distractions or whatever would prevent me from finally finding my way home. 

On Camino

We have been walking for a week now. We arrived in Lisboa and took the train up to Porto. It was a flash from our past. Twenty nine years and a couple months ago we arrived in Portgual to learn a most complex and gratifying language. One our teachers claimed was "dead" because it did not change. 

After nine months we continued on to Moçambique where we integrated our language skills into those of a colonised and presumably liberated people. We missed quite a lot on our first time here: dedicated to conquering a language to engage a people. In the shuffle, we somewhat missed the Portuguese themselves. 

This journey has been delightfully different. Now we speak their language, albeit with an African accent. We are practically welcomed back to family and encouraged and blessed now by the very colonisers we overlooked before. Our distant goals blinded us to closer treasure. 

This trip I am seeing this amazing people with new eyes. Before I saw their backward focus: everything pointed to their former glory days, the explorers. Now I grasp how important their heritage is. But I run ahead. That will come. 

Today I celebrate their appreciation of cats. Every city has a feline community, Portuguese have a special relationship with them which the cats understand. These cats are friendly. The shortest street in Porto has the largest cat mural I have ever seen.  Painted by Liqen, a Galician artist, this Blue Cat is inscrutable and enchanting. He has a frayed computer cord in his mouth and a bemused smile. Butterflies flit around him. He sits on a discarded motherboard and is either carrying a medieval city on his back or it nestles in the backdrop. His titanic paws are solid, yet the foreground is strewn with debris--a skull, even. And a random gondolier poles his barge of--is it pottery--across the cat's chest. 

I expect the cat to mysteriously wink at any moment. He's Portuguese, after all, and knows he is   important in the grand scheme. Whimsy brings ordinary things to new light. A truly Portuguese trait. 

Sunset at 7:58

I sift the sand for poems

and scan the waves for dreams--

as the sun with salmon tresses

sinks blind between the seams

of day and night and dusk descends

and mountains at my back ring round

the pinkish purple skylight blends

and augurs coming dawn

Wave Walking in three parts

i.

Tightly together two stand as

one against the surf,

a surf too mild 

for such unity:

his arm circles her shoulder,

clasps his hand on the other—

she leans into him, a hand

in his back pocket.

Sidelong close

her right, his left legs blend

thighs knit, knees lock.

Looking out where sea meets sky,

muted couple—not young or old

in middle years, why

do they feel taut,

straining to breathe?

what have they lost or won:

a child—a cancer—a curse?

Behind I softly circum-

navigate them in their

“only two”ness,

their unknown tomorrow

they walk into together.

ii

Further on a smaller couple,

look-alikes, but she’s taller, 

hands interlocked and raised for

gentle waves greeting.

Laughing, crouching, jumping 

almost

together to defeat

the bright benign surf.

Together, you two,

keep holding those hands:

create a habit to save his life or 

hers or yours—

Laugh, jump, celebrate

the tide of life

it’s ebb and flow.

iii

And now in the rocky shallows

strewn with grittier sand and

kelp artistically splayed

she poses poised in

a white nothingness to enhance

bronze bareness.

She flings blonde tresses with artless grace

face upturned

to sun, then the 

downward sultry pout

and turn again, hand on hip,

knee raised, back bent,

hand to lip, to back of head—

All the while the ragged-haired men

with camera and lights

plod in the murky water

clicking, turning, focusing, almost kneeling;

who’s directing this 

liturgy of worship, 

praise to human sexuality?

Is she priestess—

acolytes follow with

candles and incense 

or goddess— 

she moves languidly,

provocatively 

for adoration, 

or offering—

evocation, supplication.

out of the shallows into shadows,

on the grainy beach,

she changes vestments and 

continues familiar ritual dances

for a faceless congregation 

in cyber-space

Wings

If I had wings I soon would be

soaring swiftly out to sea--

scanning horizons for a whale

upon whose back I'd gladly sail.