If you hear a rooster crow in New York you already know two things.

You are not in a tropical country and someone smuggled one into the community.

I have watched the movie out of Africa almost 45 times and every time I watch,

I find a new nugget to admire in the story,

And always I am captivated by the photography.

Some of the most beautiful trees are seen in the film.

Africa is magnificent and I believe it to be the eyeball of God.

Certain films I watch repeatedly because of the way the stories they tell caress my sensibilities.

Midnight in Paris, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven they begin the list.

Have you ever seen coffee plants in bloom from your perch on top of a hill?

And what does love feel like?

Is it the same as the transported experience that comes when you see the flowers on the coffee plants, their symmetry and beauty on full display in soft early morning sun;

or is it the space you enter when you look into the eyes of your dog,

is it the loss you begin to feel when you think of dying and having to leave a room filled with your books?

What does love amount to at the end of each day?

It’s God you say though no one ever saw God.

I for one cling to the idea because I will fall apart without my beliefs.

That is how I have kept on living all these years.

My beliefs keep me alive. And who shall I thank for this consciousness?

My beliefs come with music that sits below them to buoy them up should I waver.

Music reminds me when I am not brave, and like glue the notes seep between my joints and make me straight again and rests an eternal promise upon my heart.

Faith, music, God, love.

I hear the sea lapping on the shore and earlier I heard a cock crow and I see seagulls drifting aimlessly where the wind would have them.

I smell smoke from a wood fire and see market folk,

I blink rapidly to end the dreamscape,

I am in love and it is breaking my heart.

My tears are salty.

02/24/2020

Lmh