JOHN ORTIZ

Last year we were in Puerto Rico.
And we were on the beach.
Sun going down.
Beautiful, red, bursting sun, dropping . . .
golden coins into the ocean.
And I was eating a mango.
And it was sticky and sweet.
And Therese was rubbing my back,
real gentle, and sometimes her hand
would come down to my ass.
And someone on the beach
was playing a twelve-string mandolin
and a little girl was singing
in a high stratosphere voice,
pure and brown like her skin . . .
these golden flecks around her greenish eyes . . .
like she’d been kissed there
by the sun’s miniature lips . . .
little kiss-tattoos
around the solar system of her mulatto eyes:
her voice bathing me in warm, fat notes,
ancient notes full of slavery and passion.
And I asked myself as I stood there on the beach:
why am I not happy here?
Why don’t I stay here and live like this
the rest of my life?
Why, God, isn’t this enough?
And I realize now—my ambition
was like a disease in my system.
This disease was commanding me
to leave paradise and kill myself
with work twenty-four hours a day.
And even if this disease destroyed me,
I had to obey it.
It would not let me go
no matter how much I drown it
in mangoes and music and sun showers.