A place called El Refugio

Where do we go when there’s no place of refuge, when all has been taken from us and we are left with the pale ashes of self after the phoenix has flown, and a breeze left lifts us from the balcony to some distant shore? The Aegean has been haunting me again in my sleep as if I had some unfinished from a lost century. The scrunch of sharp golden sand underfoot, the blue sea inviting us into our dream refuge. Refugio. I am in another language, another sea, traitorous Cortez's sea and in a place called El Refugio that is anything but. When was it ever someone’s refuge, surely not within this century. Not this wide greasespot in the road, a dusty town we can’t seem to get out of. I watch dawn turn into midday, a man in huaraches herds his goats and pigs to another sparse patch of desert sand. I’m desperate for coffee and the next bus will not come, ever. At the bodega I manage to order a cafécito of sorts. Nescafé and Cremora. I find out too late to the amount I thought trifling was worth a day's wages to this man who kisses it and crosses himself and hold sit up to the sun exclaiming Madre de Díos. Mother of God indeed. Perhaps El Refugio was the site of many lost missions strung loosely together from Sonoma to Loreto where the wolf boy was born. They all have hair on fire faces—soft, downy and black. For them, even the girls, the only refuge was to run away across the border to the circus. Wolf boy send money home to his family each week. He looks in the mirror brushes his cheeks and brow, squares his shoulders to meet the public. For him there is no refuge, only gawkers. He longs for the normal life, with friends and family. No more freak shows but he will miss the money. In Refugio, inside of the sea, prison walls, prisoners within sight of the sea the brine dark sea. 

2/24//2006 Writers' Group