lyrical portrait from a friend

-------- these are words that were given to me after i shared a vision with a friend about having a table someday where all kinds of people could come and eat and find love and warmth and celebrate our similarities rather than our differences.---------


We've grown tired in time, of endless weathered miles
Heavy footsteps slide, down this fabled path
As we heed the tale, spit loud from fathers' lips.
"Seek till searching stops, at the oldest table tree"
It's there where they once fled, left home without a cent
To the home where she has carved, a tree to eat and dream.

We each gathered 'round, and ate all her food.
Drank up the company, swallowed and chewed.
And we all came alone,
till we all bowed a head at the holy oak slab
In the beak of the earth, and the breast of the sea
Everyone's stomachs grin. She fed me.

Cracked leaves tossed high from trees, the young grass; it sprung deep
Through black field marsh's bog, past dead mango groves
Stands her slab fashioned of oak, where we drench our throats
Sprawled out in tangled branch, Take peace in sheltered grace
The song we sing, with mouths full and stomachs smiling
Food our mouths do meet, and Love; we're listening

miles and miles.

sun-shower rain-shine
six hours in a metal box with rubber wheels
i wish i had noticed when the palm trees turned into cacti
i feel like everything has worked out so perfectly - you wouldn't believe how many busses we've walked right onto that were heading exactly where we wanted to go - hardly any waiting. Thank you, God, your presence has been known here in Latin America. I found a bobby pin today under Matt's foot, right outside our hostel door - it was exactly what i had been looking for in Belize.

In Mexico City there were these purple trees, even whole purple parks, plaza violetta. I really enjoyed Mexico City - so much so that I could even imagine living there. Today Matt jokingly suggested that we should rob a local store or passerby - the guidebooks are so full of warnings about indigenous pickpockets roaming the streets - so it would be fun to mix things up, to surprise the guidebooks, kind of like it would be fun to escape Texas across the border into Mexico maybe in the middle of the night - you know, just to mix things up. I love Mexico - it was nothing like the obscured glimpse of a border town that i got in college. Oaxaca was amazing - we arrived late at night and stumbled into this little gem of a bar with 2 for 1 cervezas and an incredibly festive live band with Salsa, Mexican Polka (my favorite) and many more foreign Latin beats that the locals introduced us to.

so yeah, viva la Spanish-speaking-world, we're in Antigua, Guatemala for now - completely charming in its colonial, Latin style. Guatemala is like the home-away-from-home. It makes a lot more sense than Belize (scarcely populated Carribean nation where they speak Creole-English, no one is in a hurry, and everything is bizarrely pricey while the people live in tropical poverty), in Guatemala the people are happy and they smile when you pass on the sidewalks. maybe my next post will be in Spanish.

con mucho carina,
molly