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| Purim moon over San Mateo bridge, ©Maureen Hurley 2012 |
Passing over that same bridge eight years later, returning from another teaching gig in San Jose, remembering that first residency, also in Willow Glen, never dreaming I’d find myself back here again, not like this, wondering how I pulled it off way back then, considering the distance, the time, making the best of the arduous journey, taking the scenic long way home for beauty’s sake, the fog licking the coastal hills where Portolá once camped, was it also under the Purim moon? Telescoping time, that moment when a memory from the past collides with time-present. This time, it was earlier in the day, so the full moon was higher in the sky, a standard issue white, but I was remembering that old orange moon hovering over the Coyote Hills, pondering how much my life has changed, never sleeping in the same place more than a few days at a time, yet the same moon still rises, like Lazarus, over the bay. The next generation of blue-eyed cormorants preening themselves on the pylons. They say your cells replace themselves every seven years, The next generation of cells have replaced my old self. Who I am. Today, we wrote color poems, a young boy wrote a poem about picking tangerines in Israel, the tangible scent and sweetness of the globes against a blue sky, in his remembered country. He writes blue is the color of peace. He sits across the desk from an Arab boy who can only write about action figures. He writes that red is the color of peace. Poetry is a fine line, a peace fire. We are all so far from home. The whole world is a very narrow bridge. Shalom. Salaamit. Pax out.
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| Purim Moon, Eden Landing Ecological Reserve. ©2012 |
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