It’s that time at the close of the afternoon, when you rise
to the evening, go down the spiral stairs to the glass-walled bar
overlooking the swimming pool and order a cerveja,
where a small crowd of vacationers, smelling faintly
of suntan lotion, sit and tell stories, of getting the best deal
on a pair of cork sandals, of standing, mute, at the sight
of Montserrat Monastery, of heart operations, with complications,
of a drill-sergeant yoga instructor, of a mother, cursing her nursing home,
of grandchildren, turning out right, of a daughter who sojourns to Ashrams,
of the tastiest monkfish in old town, of walking,
at 70, the Camino de Santiago…

The comfortable hum of humans telling stories,
like glad frogs throat-singing our way into the night,
and like those frogs, we stay mostly below the surface;
almost always keeping nine-tenths of us out of sight —
like icebergs, only warmer.

And occasionally, perhaps because of that warmth,
there’s a crack beneath the surface
that exposes more of you than you’d intended,
but is received with openness, and understanding,
and even if you’ll never see these people again,
it doesn’t cancel out the surge of hope that washes through you,
restoring to flight, the bird of your worth,
charging the sails of your courage,
making you feel you’ll weather the creeping indignities of aging,
the squalls of dying.

What’s the word? There should be a word for the wave of yearning,
the lake of thanksgiving, you feel for all the people
that pass through your life,
that have added to your life.

And even as the gaps of time and place between our lives
grow wider, like rowboats drifting away from a dock,
never count it as loss!

Here’s the headline:
The human spirit has risen above the human condition.
To sustain it, is a grand hope, but not out of reach.
It happens all the time; it can happen anywhere;
as it happens every day, during happy hour,
at the Luna Solaqua in Albufeira.

Inscription at the entrance:
“Nós ossos que aqui estamos pelos vossos esperamos.”)
“We bones that are here, for your bones we wait.”

Step into the bone chapel in Evora, Portugal,
and the little mix-up you had at the hotel,
or the rain that’s ruined your beach day, or
the limp lettuce and skewer of overcooked squid —
is forgotten, terminou!

And when you leave, minutes, or, seemingly, days later,
you vow to send your family and friends personalized postcards,
telling them, “I’ll never forget the height of the sun on the door
the hour you were born.” Or, “What a delicious, brazen wonder,
to be living on this earth, at the same moment as you.” Or,
“Watching you weed the garden was part of my destination.”

Like a perpetual Ash Wednesday, like a near-death experience,
just the shock of it, like a cudgel, like a shout, wake up! O dreamer,
to your one and only life!

Yet, a moment later I’m snapping pictures.
The young couple beside me take smiling selfies, say, ghoulish!
say, like, sooooo eerie! then walk across the square
and down the alley to the pub — content with brochure info:
how the 16th-century cemeteries were overcrowded
so the Franciscan monks dug up 5000 bodies,
prepared mortar, became skilled layers of skulls,
femurs, fibulae, radii, humeri.

I won’t be back so I linger a bit longer, try, like the old monks,
to honour the souls these bones once bore; try, but fail,
to feel that singular silence that travels in us,
and travels with us after we are gone.

The world is a hard place and our bones are hard enough
to endure for many years. Likewise, our skulls — their architecture,
not unlike the domes of cathedrals; how they hold the instruments
of praises and curses, how they house the passageways
of wonder and delight, sorrow and heartache.

How in the midst of this trip, our friend and travelling companion,
hears of the death of his mother.
How a friend back home is facing his cancer.
How every one of us has drunk the grief of intimate loss,
and will drink more.

We are, of course, all dying, all flowing forward,
swept up, getting snagged, yet flowing, all members
of this brilliant kaleidoscope of beauty and mystery.

And now it’s spring, the reckless season, the ribald season
of resurrection, where, right out my window the earth
is enrobing — slipping into its great florid garment.

All of which makes one wonder,
as we live and breathe and move about,
in these, our temporary bone temples,
why, we can’t be sufficiently kinder.

We stand on the Algarve cliffs looking out at the Atlantic.
My eyes are drawn far up and over the curve of the water,
and I have that strong sensation of homesickness,
for a place that is not my home.

The ocean is a conjurer of yearning,
and I am a paperback its waves leaf through.

My plot could be thicker, my lacunae narrower,
but I stand nonetheless,
with a mist of praise on my lips,
and watch the sun ascend through a burnt-orange brine,
while silver wisps of cloud court the morning,
and the mouths of yellow sea daisies open in devotion.

North, from the coast to the sheltered valleys of the barrocal,
the olive trees are nourishing themselves, preparing to bloom.
The citrus trees have seasoned, the roadsides are dotted
with wooden crates holding mesh bags, bulging with oranges,
lemons, you can pick from the car. Farther up the serra
are carob, almond, stone pine, and cork oak.

On a hill, cows graze beside a fallen castle, vines twine
over stone and moss-ruined mortar. Everything
but the Azores ivy is given over to gravity.

We drive through villages, walk their mazes of tiled alleys,
enter their sandstone chapels and vaulted churches —
much of the sacred imagery is lost on me.
But I am a tourist with vacationing eyes,
what do I know about the woman whose head is bowed?
whose hands are cupped in supplication, whose very body,
before the dark carving of Christ, is a depiction of prayer.

In the town squares are markets. We buy figs and fresh almonds;
sample port, red, tawny, ruby; we eat monkfish, cataplana
with cod and cockles, the lamb stew is questionable, but the sea bass
was caught this morning, and the wine is cheap and good.

I want to listen to Fado, that profoundly melancholic music
peculiar to Portugal. It would have paired well with the stew;
as would have the Neil Diamond impersonator in Albufeira.

Always, there are gothic cathedrals, soaring pointed arches,
flamboyant rose windows held in webs of stone tracery,
and towering belfries, where white storks copulate,
their considerable joys sound like faraway machine-gun fire.

We stroll the dark cloisters, enter the airless naves,
the apses, beyond decorative, yawn with gold-leaf opulence;
lavish statues, extravagant knotwork, the busts, the figurines,
altogether, none so rich as the deep ochre cliffs,
the sea, the sand, the sun, to where we’ll return.

– a falconry of seraphim
– the shrapnel of silence
– a stack of dark clouds
– a fistful of light
– a translucent mirror
These are basic tools for the mystic.

Mystics are not special.
Like all of us, they need coffee, go to the washroom,
get a little bitchy when one of their seven-times-a-day
gets interrupted.

We rightfully ask,
what use are they? what is their role?

It’s a question they love
to leave unanswered, as though that were the answer.

I befriended one once. I’m not sure what I was thinking.
I scolded myself: it’s not like getting a pet.

Like many, he was shoeless and profoundly homeless.
Living arrangements were not surprising, he only wanted a closet
in the basement.

We rarely spoke, which I anticipated. Once I asked him about his day.
“I deal in appearances and realities,” he said.

I said, “Reality is like my body, solid with water, and surface areas,
what’s more real than that?”

He was as quiet as Christ.
Then stepped through the closed door and went downstairs.

Later that year I saw him sitting on the front step, sipping air. I yelled,
“You have no idea! Up here it’s every organism for itself!”

“Follow me,” he said. We went downstairs.
He opened the closet. It was a madhouse of connections.

Just a week later he appeared in the grey of the evening,
while I was clearing dinner dishes.
“I have news from the edge,” he said, “none of us
are loved enough.”

I broke down.
He hugged me.
Then left my house.

I watched him
make his way down the sidewalk,
as he slowly vanished.