farmette life 18

The music uncurls with 
The soft vowels of inlets,
The christening of vessels, 
The titles of portages,
The colours of sea grapes,
The tartness of sea-almonds,
The alphabet of church bells,
The peace of white horses,
The pastures of ports,
The litany of islands,
The rosary of archipelagoes,
Anguilla, Antigua,
Virgin of Guadeloupe,
And stone-white Grenada
Of sunlight and pigeons,
The amen of calm waters,
The amen of calm waters,
The amen of calm waters.
(Derek Walcott)

By midnight, the sailors pulled into a cove of a protected island off the coast of Puerto Rico. (I know this from satellite charts -- they are still out of communication range.) I would guess that this is exactly what Ed would want to do, though he would push for something more remote. "Uninhabited" would be ideal. Turquoise waters, a sandy strip, perhaps a smell of a pine tree. Sleep there, under the stars. Swim out to sea, come back again.

My own Caribbean dream would be different. I would go inland. Taste their foods, smell their flowers, watch the people work, the children play. It would not be Puerto Rico, because the island is too big, too hard to navigate. But nor would it be remote. Derek Walcott's lyrical verse has me grow wistful. But I know, too, that his poem was written many decades ago. Tourism, including, hypothetically, my own, does not always benefit the islands. (One very good story about Walcott can be found in this New Yorker article from 2004.)

Every person deserves to come close to her or his dreams and I wish Ed had chosen to stay a little while longer out on the Caribbean. To sail out to some of those remote islands. To swim out, swim in, settle in on the warm sands and fall asleep.

*   *   *

Here, on the farmette, things are very calm.


 



Breakfast.





We've bounced back to November temperature normals.

The animals are behaving, hanging close to their sleeping quarters.






My energies are slowly coming back, so that weekly grocery shopping, postponed from yesterday, feels doable. Well, sort of odd again because I'm shopping for a week with Ed in it, an Ed who may be trying on new hats. For all I know, he has turned vegan. Or embraced meat. People get very happy with their travel habits and vow, at least initially to keep them alive upon a return.