Isla Mujeres: Weeks Before the Breakdown

When electricity failed and the full moon
spilled into that restaurant gilding
patio tiles and wine glasses, throwing
shawls of light across our bodies
and the musicians from the Andes
kept on playing and the locals came out
of their houses to listen, did you know
that a numb part of her had already risen
into white air, was floating
above chimneys and phone wires,
concrete rubble heaped on the seawall,
above the bleached skin of the Caribbean,
above reefs, islands, whole continents,
the planet in its envelope of breath.
When the drummer in the red camisa
threw back his shoulders with a sort of moan
and the others stomped their feet,
coaxed dreams from those mountain flutes,
did you hear her whisper I might make it.
Tonight might last forever.

 

Poems by Sharon Fain: