So Long Santiago
So Long Santiago
by Rebecca Conrow-Bayles | Nipomo, CA
Cobblestones float in rivulets
Shoes squelch
Twirl in the retreating rain
Join an impromptu dance party
Galician radio, staff, and patrons stream out of a café.
Another round
One more kiss both cheeks
American bear hugs
Clink glasses
Shared plates
Crisscrossing conversations
On one side French and Americans contrasting the rise of right-wing politics
(translation apps, fingers flying)
The other, a researcher walking on sabbatical explains
AI, Revelations, simulations, and apocalypse.
The table holds it all.
New perspectives we grow and shift
Incrementally we learn to
Include and transcend.
Norwegian, German, French,
English, Dutch, Canadian,
Australian, American, a world of
Found friends like family.
Shells tied to our packs
He relates to the group,
“It represents the hand of God giving and taking,
depending on which way it’s facing”.
Symbols layered with metaphor
Meaning upon meaning
with every step tap, flap, slap.
Walking through this land of legends,
Ancient pilgrims, striving saints.
There is a church housing chickens
Descendants of the resurrected, complicit in a hanging
in the Plaza Mayor.
Centuries blur fiction and fact.
And yet,
Place your palm on porous stone walls
(archaeologists describe microscopic microcosms)
Trace the lineage of the ancient hands modernity masks
Permeating trivial boundaries
Feel the superficiality of time and, for that matter, space.
So great this cloud of witnesses
We are deeply accompanied.
Field of stars, Compostela, once void of GPS
Bandits and starvation
Bedbugs and blisters
United in shared struggle we make our Way.
The physical path now marked so clearly
(The genius of a priest and leftover highway paint).
Is it any less perilous?
Perhaps just differently so.
More subtle, internal
Change is inevitable
You won’t come home the same.
Stripped down to what can be carried
Far beyond what fits in a pack.
Stories, judgments about our discomfort
Burden us with the heaviest pain.
Sneaky weight of expectations perpetually re-attach
Despite diligent purging.
In the embrace of newfound companions
“Auf Wiedersehen” never “goodbye.”
Compassionate space, forgiveness, and grace
For the abandoned parts of myself
My favored forms of neglect.
“Don’t let anyone set your pace” she all but ordered, as I stepped aside.
She slowed for a moment’s chat and powered on.
So go slow and when you think it is slow enough, go even slower
It’s more than just walking.
The Camino Current will provide what is needed
for exactly as long as the journey takes.
