Wednesday, June 20, 2012

ODE TO SPAIN

I'm having a nostalgic moment.  I'm missing Spain.  It doesn't help that its in the news daily for its financial woes.  When I hear the news that the bottom is falling out of the real estate market there, naturally, I feel bad for the Spanish people, but one craven piece of my heart rejoices because this increases (infinitesimally) the possibility that I might one day have a little piece of property high in the Asturian hills, to restore lovingly and to make my base for hiking holidays to come.  In my dreams, it is a place for my Camino pals and I to reconnect, and a way to share Spain with all my loved ones.  Did I mention the lottery win which would have to be part of this plan?

It doesn't help that Nick is having a motorcycle adventure for the next week or so. See what happened here! It's not that I'm jealous of his fun, (if you can call hundreds of miles on rough gravel roads through spruce bog, being chewed up by "bulldogs" and blackflies whenever you stop for more than five minutes, into the heart of nowhere fun) I just wish I were having some too.

In recognition of my incurable addiction in the face of all logic, and as a way of venting my frustration at wanderlust thwarted, I present my poem, written in Spain, with photographs from two Caminos.


(clears throat)

ODE TO SPAIN


O, Spain!

Land of skulking cats, too much perfume and every thing deep fried.
Where people sing on the buses and each day is celebrated with rich red wine
....at seven o'clock in the morning.




































O, Spain!
 land of bored, tired dogs who bark at EVERYTHING
because there is nothing else for them to do.
Why do I love thee?














Is it because your women can negotiate cobble streets in stilettos?
Or because a grandee in kid leather boots
Riding his sweating gray down the street behind the bullring
paused to ask after my health?

Or is it the wagon ruts worn into stone on Roman roadways
Or any number of other reverberations of the past
That make me recognize the non-linear nature of time?




















Perhaps it is the sturdy kind of common sense
that makes city fathers install escalators on the cliffs which pass for streets
in the seaside towns.





















The "get on with it "spirit that rebuilt Gernika















Or the rich broth of comfort
that comes from millennia of human presence.



















Whatever it is, I miss its taste.
Oh, Spain......









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