Love and Mezcal

 Ah..... Mexico! Mexico Mexico Mexico.
I am in love with Mexico. And people and poets and mezcal and rancheros and limes and dancing and love.

Just got home to snow dusted Halifax two days ago. 
I was only in Mexico for one week but it felt like much much more. Maybe that is because IT IS AMAZING THERE!
and time seemed to go slow, or else i went slowly through it.
can't tell, doesn't matter.

Enclave Festival brought me there. Poetry brought me there. Thank you, poetry and people who bring poets together under umbrellas of festivals and workshops and sharing.
This morning in Canada I went to speak in a library at a local college. I drank the punch, though it had no fresh limes in it. I glowed a little bit about Mexico and there are a lot of reasons why.

For instance: avocados
the oldest most beautiful buildings I have ever seen
heat and sun and shade-y places to drink your cerveza and watch the people
leather and denim
food, everywhere, in the open air without inspections or uptight bylaws
people, everywhere, in the open air eating the food and talking to each other and communing
plazas, large ones, open air, more open air and people communing in it
traffic that seems crazy but somehow works
motorcycles that weave through like talented embroiderers, making pretty and dangerous patterns
pedestrians who know how to cross the road
spanish language and spanish-speaking poets playing with spanish language and all of it's r's rolling
mezcal
the crazy mezcal-fuelled house party, the dancing people, the shirtless hombres, the flirtation, the zest
driving around empty Colima streets late at night with artists and an open bottle (ssshhh.. don't tell. The Canadian in me loved this reckless moment)
my new friends, from Mexico, Guatemala, Germany, Chile, USA
the ocean in Manzanillo, the waves so big we could only flirt with them, the bashing that happened when I went out too far
the ceviche
the oysters on the beach that PEI-ers would have approved of
the discomfort of not speaking the language and how it was to feel outside in this way
the moments of connection that existed without the language of words (dancing, laughter, eye contact, tears)
my newfound and pressing desire to learn Spanish, so I can talk to more people in the world, and hear their poems
poems, even when i don't understand them
poets


These are some things I loved
there are more, of course
But language can't say it, can explore it, can't claim it

How grateful I am, up here in Halifax, to have been there, in Mexico, and for poetry.
Poets all over the world, living and watching.
I feel cracked open. I don't quite know what that means.. but parts are dribbling out of me
things I once believed
and those I never did
made some room so as to let Mexico in

Oh, my pounding heart.

how I love to love this world, 
t