Sands (With Lyrical Entr’actes)

art by Catherine McGuire

by Derek Jon Dickinson

 

(for S.K.S.)

 

Parched wind snapping my clothes, shadow billowing like a black sail, or empty net—its taunting vacancy, useless as seawater.

 

a rook or a bishop, chess-piece

of the desert

 

The Atacama plateau—desiccated, rain-shadowed. When our bus stopped at the Chilean border, the young officer dropped my passport in the sand and, sensitive to so many faces, stamped it quickly with discomposure. Had I smiled or looked him in the eye, his insecurities would have been my peril—paying him a bribe, or the outpost a night (or more) in jail.

 

taxonomy, heel-toe

bipedal, archaeologic-soliloquy

 

In San Pedro de Atacama I brushed sand off the candlelit bar and asked, “Cerveza fría?” The apparition gesturing— “No!” — “No ice, no electricity!” So, I drank the beer warm and reveled with the flickering visages of spectral men.

 

miraging bird, loosed like an

arrow (switchback canyon)

 

At a raucous bar in Arica, Chile I met a Russian sailor the size of a house. He talked in stories. None of which I could understand, except the punctuating slaps on my back. His spittle a mix of vodka, fish and loneliness.

 

traveler: an embellishment, a

brushstroke

 

At Jorge Chávez International Airport there were still grains of sand in my passport when the mirrored sunglasses pulled me out of line, closed the blinds like a bad movie trope, and searched my backpack for drugs.

He said I looked too nervous. I told him I had been travelling for months. Which was true. And being conversant in machismo, fractured his brittle glower with pithiness, quips, impromptu studies of his women.

 

Joked in broken Spanish and gesture that once in Buenos Aires a woman sent me a note. And before I could finish, he interrupted— “prostituta?!”—and he and I genuinely laughed. And it was then that I could have offered him a cigarette, or some token from my luggage. I could have asked him for a few sips of whatever bottle he had hiding in the drawer.

But unless one needs to, loitering is both superfluous and dangerous. The postures and laughter tense, waiting for a misstep.

 

an abruptly opened

door—gust of fresh, disconsonant

air—travelers queuing, life

rushing into me again

 

And when the plane lifted, well beyond even the most protracted reach of that country, I was never so happy about iniquity, about the pride and war of borders.

 

on the edge of the sea, where

beginning and end meet

 

In Australia, the silica sand of Whitehaven Beach is so fine and flawless, it squeaks beneath one’s feet. At night, lying shirtless across a bed of sails, moonlight publishing the anchored sloop. There, where my northern eyes have adjusted, new asterisms, the Southern Cross.

 

lucidity—moments’ great

mystery; dexterity—the mind’s

contraptions; faiths

In South Africa, the hoof-sand is scattered with the dried bones of old stories. In South Africa the hoof-sand decries some secret sorrow. In South Africa the hoof-sand is sutured with the myriad stalking hungers of the bushveld.

 

time, pushy and illiterate—protagonist/

antagonist; time interrogates peace!

 

In the Dry Tortugas, the crushed shells and coral glint like flecks of homily on my wife’s warm, sunscreen-scented skin; profile of heat—hint of rum and abandon and shipwreck. I made a treasure map to a small wooden box. She opened it. Inside, a modest diamond clutching its ring—lone survivor amongst the flotsam of clumsy words.

 

we hiked with cameras by

moonlight, took long exposures of a

Cuban Chug (refugee boat); if one takes

the risk—drown, or land safely

on the heart—and from then on

be part of either

 

 

 

 

(Epilogue: Like a sailboat, bird of two halves—one lead wing, the other a quill—we skate both the material and ethereal. Our soul is nourished by experience and travel. As we continue to fill our stomachs, and tell stories after.)

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