Tropical Breeze

Maybe it’s cliché,

but there’s just something about a tropical breeze,

something my cells refuse to name.

Perhaps it’s the way the breeze drags itself slowly through the thick brush of bougainvillea,

how the sound showers the middle of my brain.

Or maybe it’s the way the leaves of dense palms and pothos bashfully brush past each other,

pretending it was a mistake,

this soft collision of theirs.

This breeze reeks of the divine,

with the strength of the scent of an ancient lover you’re still trying to forget,

encouring each leaf dancing this way or that,

but it’s not a bachata or cumbia, not the two-step or swing or ballroom, nor the drag of blues dancers perfectly out of sync.

No,

this dance is a painstakingly slow tango.

This is a breeze that smells and tastes of salt and mystery.

This is a breeze that works in union with the beads of sweat from my ritual acts of sun-worshiping.

This is the breeze that carries the song of the sea,

the high and low notes of the whales,

the quick tempo of the dolphins’ echolocation,

the rhythm of the manta ray’s wings,

the percussion of the hammerhead ramming against its prey.

Ah yes, this, right now, is the only song my heart longs to dance to,

this one, floating along this tropical breeze.