I'm in the kind of mood that makes me appreciate the tiny things I see every day. The fact is that my life doesn't feel terribly different here. I don't feel constantly immersed in a culture strange and foreign. I don't feel as if my outlook is being radically transformed, I don't awaken each morning with stunning revelations of intercultural understanding. I am resigned to quiet contentment. It may sound cynical, it may be disappointing to admit it, but as I mentioned some time ago in an earlier post, life in Chile is still just...life. And so I return to the minuscule, I ground myself in the chance happenings that make me think or smile in the midst of my daily routine.
---
The flock of tiny schoolchildren,
identically dressed in their colorful smocks,
herded by their uniformed teachers
down a busy city sidewalk.
Their entire world a preschool wonder
of giggles and questions,
toddling legs struggle to keep up with busy minds
and there are not enough hands to hold.
---
The tiny blip of a hummingbird
flitting between the flowers that grow
at the foot of the daunting staircase
leading up to the castle where I have a history class.
---
On one deceptively fall day
there was woodsmoke in the air
and a little girl was practicing her spelling on the funicular.
---
Bookshelves, stacks of words
Even the doors are artwork
her Brazilian accent
sings in our ears
lilts around the Spanish, out of place
little plates appear tiling the mesita
milk coffee chocolate marmalade
sing on our tongues
escondidas en our little sanctuary
surrounded by the skeleton frame of a room,
worn studs exposed,
a hidden structure revealed--
our garden retreat
once.
---
There's a quiet old man on the metro
who always wears a tweed suit jacket
and reads the same little paperback:
Historia de Chile.
---
We walk to the end of the muelle, the pier
Clink 100 pesos into the binoculars
to watch the lobos del mar
Sea wolves. We call them sea lions.
They're not looking too wolfish today,
and not very lionish either.
More like blubbery lumps of bliss
sunning themselves on a gently bobbing buoy.
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