flaming jewels

Welcome like Water

...and I return, hollowed out and scoured clean, life bursting forth from my pockets...

I travelled with a smiling lion tucked in my pocket. For luck.

I walked up and down a busy road and no one stopped for me (thank god). I hiked up a camel's back. I swam in a blue-green pool under a cloudy night sky. I got drunk with a dragon on champagne. We laughed and talked and laughed and talked.

My discourse on poetry and sports seemed particularly wise.

I read. I wrote. I dozed. I had a brownie stout float.

I felt a painful & guilty loneliness as I sat by myself in an empty hotel room.

I watched Winnie-the-Pooh in a darkened room while the sun poured down outside like rain.

When I went out the air was like a wet, woolen blanket around me, but when I looked at the mountains, I felt cool.

I felt like a drab bird in my black tights and pearl-gray sweater, blown off course and lost amid the brighter-plumaged locals.

But I found that the desert, or, more precisely, the valley that I was in, was a very fine place to be.

I found a welcome like water.

...spilling out over the side, like a pitcher brim-full...

jewel@gleeful.com
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