Traces

In the hard shadow of the moon

when the recesses of light have gone 

and the faint red of the hawk’s shoulder has disappeared from the sky

in the growing pulse of the praying mantis

when the city has come into its own new light

it is here where I often remember:

the weaving of ocean vines

the trails of history, cemented by touch

the small ridged blossom of the cowry shell

the indigo dye made radiant by the seller’s basket.

The way the long grass 

emerges at the shore.

Something of that meeting.

These are memories both distant and near

traces of them lived and felt 

laughing in the company of the ones who came

holding the silence of the moment, as we stare 

with wonder, at the bubbling ruptures of a painter’s canvas,

pull, with care, the clinging skin of a stubborn fruit.

I recall these moments 

not from the grand gesture

of a thing once known, 

but from a small place

the place where my child’s hand

is hidden warmly inside my own.