Posted in Poetry, Prose, Strangers

To the Lost: A bricolage poetry series

Posted on by kindeyesandstrangeplaces

On Sunday, May 31st, my favorite newspaper, The New York Times, published a list of nearly 100,000 names of the victims of COVID-19 in the United States. On its front cover were the names of 1,000 victims, along with their ages, locations, and a brief line from their obituaries.

I was struck by the array. Some of the lines read like poetry, some made me laugh aloud, and some made my heart ache in their brevity. I imagined each of the people behind these names, and I winced painfully at the thought of many of them dying alone, without their families surrounding them. This tribute from the Times affords them even the slightest recognition of a life lived and now concluded, with dignity.

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Posted in Strangers

A true ‘kind eyes in strange places’ moment!

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Night 1 in Entebbe: After a mildly wild goose chase for a restaurant, we ended up at a tiki bar on the banks of Lake Victoria just as the sun was setting. • • Our waiter, Arnold greeted us and joked around with me about something I can’t recall. He had a cheerful, mischievous vibe, and he sounded more like me than anyone else in my party. • • “Where is your accent from?” I asked him. He smiled at me, almost as if he was joking and said, “I’m from Philly.” “You’re from Philly?!….I’m from Philly!” “Are you joking?” “No, are you joking?” He was born and spent his first 7 years in the city of brotherly love, just long enough to take a mid-Atlantic Ameirican accent with him back to the Pearl of Africa. • • Needless to say, Arnold and I became fast friends. The planet is enormous but the world is small and “coincidences are just God’s way of remaining anonymous.” • • Love to you, Arnold, my new friend! I hope our paths cross again one day! • • PS. Arnold’s favorite Roots album is Game Theory. My maaaan.

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Posted in Nature Writing, Travel Writing

Gorilla trekking (part 2)

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[Uganda, Part II] • When we were close, our guide pulled us close and gave us a quick primer: stay 7 meters away, don’t make loud noises or impersonate the gorillas, don’t call them over to you but if they approach you, act natural. We could take photos, but no flash and nothing cheeky. We were in their home, and the bottom line was to deeply respect them during our visit. • We had one hour. • • During John’s little pep-talk, Carla and I saw a gorilla in a tree, just in view. We both equally suppressed squeals and then tried to get John to finish his schpeel—every single one of us was buzzing with anticipation. • • When our guides led us to the Nshongi family, it was a juvenile male of 4 or 5 that we had seen sitting in a tree. He was casually munching on a branch and looking at us, thoroughly unphased yet certainly not welcoming. The first thing I remember him doing was taking a nice, long, uninhibited fart to welcome us. • • Two babies came over to join him. They tumbled and played like the tree limbs were a jungle gym which, I guess to baby gorillas, they most definitely are. And then, the silverback. The head honcho, the pater familias. Each gorilla family has one alpha male (all other males have to abscond from the group upon maturing, or challenge the silverback for his throne.) This silverback was 32. He’d been in this forest, living his life, against the toughest of odds, since 3 years before I arrived on this planet. I chewed on that thought as I watched him exist. • • His back looked bald but it shone metallic and silver in the sun. He acknowledged the two babies in the tree above him and chewed some more, a mere body’s length away from us. This was certainly less than a 7 meter distance, but our guides and the trackers kept cutting down obstructing brush with their machetes and drawing us to come closer. • • Two adult females came out of the brush and began to lodge under a shaded tree next to us. The silverback went to join them, crossing clear in front of us, and the 3 of them laid, lazily grunting and picking each other’s fur (what I learned is an action of friendliness and fidelity.) • • (Continued in comments)

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Posted in Nature Writing, Travel Writing

Gorilla trekking (part 1)

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The Uganda post deluge begins now! ••••• Seeing the critically endangered mountain gorillas in their natural habitat at the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest felt like a sort of religious pilgrimage. We were giddy and nervous and ready to face the forest, and to meet a family of our ape brothers on their own turf. • • The 2.5 hour hike there,through the rain forest with our merry band of 16, was complete with extensive bush-whacking, precariously crossing streams and rivers, very quiet men with very big guns accompanying us, elephant tracks that had become mini wading pools, machetes and vines, butterflies aplenty and the cold smell of damp mud. (Talk about feeling alive.) It felt like we were all learning to walk again with new legs; what had been so easy on solid ground now became a labored task, full of spills in the mud and shoes taken off feet and stuck in quicksand. • • About an hour after diverting from the path and scaling up a vertical incline of (truly) Impenetrable verdigris, negotiating with stinging nettles and thick vines in every shade of green, our guides howled to the trackers. They howled back. We were close. The Nshongi family was having their Saturday lunch less than a kilometer away, and we were their unexpected guests. • • [more to come…]

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