ALAN GOODIN: A STORY AND TWO POEMS
- Poet, photographer and publisher, The Jaguar
Catch 21
©1999
By
Alan L Goodin
I retired in 1999 and moved to Mexico. I love to fish and finally settled in Puerto Escondito, a small fishing village on the Pacific Ocean. After a few weeks of learning my way around the beaches, watching the Mexican fishermen, getting myself a new fishing pole I began fishing almost every day, sitting in a green plastic chair on the beach under an umbrella, promoting Corona beer from the back of my chair. This was great and after I found, what I call my Secret Spot, “Hogar del Pez.” I began to catch more than my limit, 12 fish per person, so I bought an ice cooler and filled it with fish and put a sign on it, “Fish for Sale or Trade. I had it made, all morning to catch fish and by noon had usually sold half my catch and had enough fish for comida and the others to trade for mangos and a couple of cold beers. It was great but I wanted more, not more fish, but the solitude of the sea. I bought a small sailboat for about $1000 pesos.
In less than three months I’d found a really great hole to catch Dorado, a tasty white, salt-water fish. In fact, the fishing was so good I bought that little boat. Most of the time I had more fish than I could eat so some days I just sat in the boat and wrote little stories, poems and read Neruda’s poems.
It was quiet, healthy and I was very happy and I always caught my limit, if I wanted to. One warm balmy morning, I was sitting in my boat, newly christened, Hogar del Dorado, and writing about a beautiful girl, Linda, who traded me mangos for Dorado. Then I heard, “Hey Señor.” I looked up to see a non-tanned Gringo looking down at me then at my boat, checking her out bow to stern, then eyeing the sails. Smiling, he nodded approvingly then said, “Señor, how much to take me fishing for four hours?”
I said, “Five hundred pesos plus twelve more for each beer.” His smile grew and we shook hands. We set out to my favorite place and dropped anchor. The Gringo looked around and somewhat smugly asked why I had chosen this particular spot. “Because this is where the Dorado live,” and went back to reading. In less than four hours the Gringo had caught twenty-one Dorado.
Sitting back, very lazy, under my Panama hat, munching on fresh shrimp and sipping mezcal, I sensed the Gringo staring at me. I pushed my hat back a little and looked up at him. Staring intensely at me, and then cocking one knowing eye while raising his eye brow, he looked around the empty ocean, as if to see if anyone was listening and then back into my eyes.
Looking around one more time, leaned forward and whispered, “Hey Dude, this is awesome. You know you could make a lot of money doing this if you’d listen to me.”
“Si, I’m always interested in making a lot of money.” I yawned and opened the ice chest, uncapped a frosty Corona, smiled and handed it to him. “Señor. Por favor, go on.”
“Well the way I see it, if you had twenty boats like this and charged 500 pesos for a half-day and $100 pesos for each hour more, why you could pay off all the boats in one year, retire and…”
“And what Señor? Move to Mexíco and fish all day?”
I heard his reel spinning knowing he’d just hooked Catch Twenty-Two.
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Loves Never Rides Alone © 2010
By
Alan L. Goodin
Galloping thoughts of
Just you and me
Shoot though the mist
Of cactus and trees.
Riding on stallions
Across golden ranges
Through a sycamore breeze
Under long loping branches
where tree’s kiss the leaves.
Leaping through rivers
awash in you dew
Where warm tender moments
Are thoughts about you.
We enter places
so intimate so new.
If this is heaven
my faith is renewed
Now you’re burning
I’m boiling in you,
This time is so precious,
our hearts holding hands,
our hearts in our eyes
our eyes reaching out,
For just the right words,
A glance saying yes
A yes meaning now,
And now brought your sighs.
Relax-relax now my love
lay back in the saddle
Our joy has been spent
And now we’re reborn
We know what it meant
Bring on life’s clock
The ticking, the talk
Oh yes, talk, not of tock
But not of what spent
But rather of trails
We’ve left to invent
The gate she is open
My lips seek the skies
Don’t think this ridin’ is over
We not said bye
And only for hours
A day at the most
I’ll ride side by side
My tongue combs you coat
My passion my love
Is making you scream
Out in your joy
Of the places you’ve been.
Oh passions and sighs
Promises, in past tense
You filled my great dream
When first was your sigh
and then came your scream
and leap, up over the sky and
landscapes of gold
Only to duplicate again
On the horizons of
Warm azure nights
Under silver moon spotlights
Lighting the dreams
Two people have made.
Warms days in meadows embracing
Green leaves of spring in
Laces of swirling passions
Licked by the sun’s tongue and
Hot solar winds
Of steaming fires
Aglow with our heat
Welding together the arms
Of giving and taking
And words set to music
In songs born of joy,
In dews of sweet sounds,
Speaking so soft,
I speak them to you
We dance in the orgy
The tones of B sharp
Then once, when the music is in you ,
C major, B flat, I am D molished
The gallop is back
The song in our key
We ride through the spring
Take what love brings,
Move on, ride on, ride into
Sweet days of summer
Exploding in honey,
The hives of our lives
Shaking our souls
the buzz of excitement.
Sweet labor of love,
All placed at its door
Open, inviting to taste,
Capture my burning tongue
Melt my heart,
Give me the sweetest of dews
Of long days and nights
Nights under bright stars, mantle of God
I share what I am
I give you my hands, cross
The naked table of land.
The mustangs of ecstasy,
Leaping out of corrals that
Imprison fast-racing hearts on
Escaping hoofs-beats on winds
Whistling through canyons of dreams
Past mountains of love,
The mountains of life
Through trees turning gold.
Riding through pastures
Long dried by summers’ hot sun
And roaming the ranges of time
Where gray herds have past,
Slowing, to smell the old scents that
Others have left, faded tracks,
Blown away in yesterday’s wind
Over the now gold meadow lands,
and
Over old streambeds of thoughts,
Now dry and alone
When
One rider has left.
A. Goodin [re: Mar 05]
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Adobe Tears
Anti-colonial eyes stare through ghostly shadows,
up red towers searching for God in belfries
through adobe-colored dust
blown down narrow, snake-like calles
below red-tiled roofs that shade
carpenters, potters, painters, writers
and Indian weavers avoiding the sun’s rays
melt the daydreams that mask
the pueblos hopes
hidden behind their simple smiles.
Wondering brown eyes, reading
in ten thousand zocalos,
outstretched Mexicano hands
pray for a peso across the reddish-brown,
forgotten belly of America.
Ancient Indios,
learned native people with timeless crafts,
dying, struggling under too much weight
like starving burros stumbling
up and down steep cobblestones and muddy trails
day by day to flee
the cruel poverty of yesterday’s flowers
only to smell the stench of mananas dead bouquets
blown under this morning’s door.
God-forsaken religious land,
riddled with churches
people consumed with crosses
in a land of Santos and Virgens
offer small streams of hope,
only to be washed away in a deluge of sadness,
punctuated by the gleam in a child’s eyes
set upon a melting ice cream cone.
Talk to me, adobe towns,
with your clay of mud and blood,
rouged walls of whispers, screams and dreams
in pueblos twice as poor as a potter’s field.
Listen to me, adobe walls of government,
thick with blood and sweat,
deflecting tears and cries
that escape the hungry people.
Rejoice with me, adobe people,
concealed behind twin masks
of Spanish and Aztecan history:
Eagle, Snake, Diablo, Dios.
The people wait for history to meander,
their bandera to unfold
into the red, white and green
sea of democracy and embrace
the children born of Coffee, Corn and Cocoa.
Dia de Independencia, 2000
Alan L. Goodin
