Olympia

Tired, hungry, hot, I climbed the steep slope

to town, a sultry, watery place, crawling with insects

and birds.

                  In the semidarkness of the mountain,

small things loomed large: a donkey urinating on a palm;

a salt- and saliva-stained boy riding on his mother’s back;

a shy roaming black Adam. I was walking on an edge.

The moments fused into one crystalline rock,

like ice in a champagne bucket. Time was plunging forward,

like dolphins scissoring open water or like me,

following Jenny’s flippers down to see the coral reef,

where the color of sand, sea, and sky were merged,

and it was as if that was all God wanted:

not a wife, a house, or a position,

but a self, like a needle, pushing in a vein.