BRIGHT IS THE SUN AND KIND ARE ALL THE BODHISATTVAS OF THE WEST WHILE THE HAWKS RECEDE LIKE BUTTERFLIES

The glistening of the light from the sky upon the leaves and the signs and the rest was akin to the sparkles the sun can make upon water. Cuba and its coast, and Havana, are in fact waiting, but first the days of incredible shimmering, laden also with mosquitoes, have to be gotten through. Cuba is the goal, and Cuba shall provide much material visual and literary. In the meantime, we tackle the forests and fields. Yet, what is this? There was a man, homeless, who lives in his car, and he is stuck in the middle of the parking way. A city truck tries to help him, an impossibly grand and nicely odd looking vehicle with many tires and tools and so sturdy to look at. He, plus three men, but they can’t move his vehicle for some reason. The truck leaves and I pull in up the way and pause. Soon he is asking me

Can you boost me?

If I have cables. I don’t have them anymore I don’t think. I had three sets at one time. Let me check. Nobody wants to boost me because they say it will harm their computer upon which so much electrical of their vehicle runs.

That is not true, declares the man, it won’t harm anything.

I look for the cables in compartments, suspecting I don’t have them anymore, and I don’t.

No cables. I can push you. I know how to rock the car first, and I am strong. They couldn’t tow you in that truck?

They refused. They said it’s a government truck and they aren’t allowed. For pushing, they couldn’t do it. It’s on a level way. Can you tow me, just five or ten feet and the transmission will work.

Sure.

He ties a yellow industrial grade rope to my hitch, a hitch that the most experienced auto shops in Scarborough and in the toughest neighborhood, could not get off as it somehow through the years melded and joined steel to steel. Everything happens for a reason perhaps.

I’ve seen him before, and I remember thinking, I wonder how many deer this guy sees during a day, as where he parks happens to be right where the deer crossing is.

He is kind, foreign, and I have read him and get a good read on him. So he is not up to anything.  I wonder if he ever uses the shelter. Since I was a front line worker and spoke to hundreds in his situation, I know that, and then anyhow, you can use their services while having a vehicle. Maybe he doesn’t want to go there. Maybe he isn’t allowed for some other reason. Perhaps he is hiding from someone or some group of persons. I consider reminding him of it all. Then I leave it. Leave it alone.

I turn off the air, the radio, and open the windows so I can hear. I gently pull and it starts after five feet. I hope out. He hops out and shakes hands. He is all happy, all smiles as it were, and full of thankyous. And that is it. He can park off to the side, like normal.

I make my way. The insects are busy, bustling, on the job as always. A squirrel runs up a trunk and across a branch. I hope to see a snake or something but see no such thing, not even a garter. It’s hot, but we have water and know water sources. Paced, almost languidly, we make our way through the beautiful labyrinthine pathways that gently bob up and down, sometimes looking over the valley with its cooler, even more shaded areas. There are new mushrooms always looming, nearly always strange, - occultish, and esoteric, interesting looking growths that live and thrive on trees and logs and near moss strewn trunks and other. They look sometimes feverish in their readiness and steadiness to proliferate and spread and show their vitality.

What else? The berries, small but still robust, and some are orange though most are deep red. A moth. A strange insect atop a flower, clover, or other. The old tractor parts, a marshy area, a small thin river, the dandelions that wait at attention. A plane flies overhead. In the distance, some hawks, which have a kind of magical manner I have noticed in that one would swear they were approaching, but they always withdraw, recede, and even disappear. Hawks are like butterflies. You can hardly ever really find or see them or truly know them.

I walk on. On and on and on. I like the homeless man, I think to myself…something about him. I liked almost all of them. And I muse some more under Pines and beside the wild berries whilst wearing a winter tuuk so the ubiquitous mosquitoes can’t have at me as much. I like the sun but the shade also, and the wildflowers that grow and even the scar I suppose that certain things have made across the heart or mind or psyche or spirit.

And we disappear like that, deeper into the turning contour of that path where the insects make peculiar whirling sounds and the spirit buzzes in my ear whilst the bees buzz near on the other side working, working, working their way around a glorious mess of colorful wild flowers unsullied by human hands and heavy feet having only known the rain and the wind and the sun, having only seen the feral fox or coyote making their rounds at night, having heard the songbirds so loquacious in their merriment (they must each one of them have found a soul mate, fallen in love, and have a shine over their souls, a diamond sparkle in their eyes) having been part of the secret and secreted ways of the inner sanctum that is the thick and textured forest.

And somewhere the hawks fly and glide and look and fly away, always away.

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