was it last night…

…I dreamed I was in Oaxaca, waking to the prospect of a swim first thing? Was it last night I walked to the roof-top pool in my bathing suit, a towel wrapped around my waist, and greeted Carmen, the white-winged dove, her rich mezzo-soprano arpeggios answering. Last night, or the night before.

I thought we’d return this year but life conspired. Crocuses are blooming by the Sechelt library so it’s not actually a hardship to be here on the Coast but somehow those cool evenings and warm days when we’d walk through the lively streets of Oaxaca, noting the doors, the bougainvillea spilling over a wall, the water trunk pumping up to a cistern,

the women selling mango and pineapple in a little cup, chili dusted on top, well, those are the moments I want to add up, one after another, until they measure a day, a week. The day we went to Hierve el Agua to swim in a mineral pool on the edge of the world

which was also the day we visited the weaver’s family in Teotitlán del Valle and chose a carpet, the one that is spread on the floor of my bedroom so that every time I walk on it, I remember the studio with its skeins of yarn, the indigo vat set into a long heavy table, marigold vat alongside, and stone mortars for grinding cochineal, lichens, pomegranate skins.

Was it last night? I think it was the night before. There was a day when I stood at the textile museum looking at Natalie Toledo’s beautiful creations and thought of what it must be like to born among the bougainvilleas, the scent of dust and agave, doves singing deep-throated arias from the rooftops each morning, and I want it all again. Next year?

I walk upon the foliage
a heavy door opens,
I can touch the peeling walls
what does my nose smell?

Note: the lines are Natalia Toledo’s, from her poem “House of my Dreams”.