The Gaze of Others

We choose words carefully, each of us.  Or the words choose us.  Each of us a word for the day.  Mine?  superlativo.  Sandy’s?  alumbrar.  Sophia’s?  tornasalado.  We toss a salad of phrases mixing in these new words.  Las diosas lead me through kundalini yoga on a stone tile platform six inches below water level in the palm-shaded pool.  I am distracted by monkeys, wondering (I, not they) whether they might be the elusive howlers that we hear near and far before dawn, announcing their unseen traverse through the treetops.  Toucans touch Sandy’s eyes only.

A hunchbacked agouti startles into flat-spined posture, motionless.  The birds and animals who live here meet our gaze for long moments, scan and translate our relaxed movements into something recognizably undaunting, seem to accept us into the neighborhood, then continue with their searches: the agouti scouring the lawn, the spider monkeys levering and jumping and flying towards small orange fruits, the capuchins slurping coco water through a gnawed crater.  Each gazes upon me and continues, except the black hawk. 

Sensing the hawk’s presence, I turn to find him perched solidly on a low branch eight feet away, willing my gaze into his own.  We hold there, converting moments into currents of energy.  I introduce my camera to the willing hawk.  He stares into the large new eye and is unafraid.  Noiseless photos shift to video, and as I stoop to get a different angle, he flexes legs and lifts wings.  But stays there as I slowly regain vertical.  He gifts me a long hop to a nearby branch, so I return the favor by moving on.  On my return path, I catch a glimpse of fleet movement, a skitter through the leaves, heavy wings lifting small burdens for dinner.  Later I look upward from my hammock to find him watching and assessing once again.  “Do I have the power to conjure another mouse if I rise out of the hammock and edge around the yard?” he perhaps wonders.  He is assimilating me into his life, I am sure. 

Raucous macaws are supplanted by hoots and roars from the waveset in the golfo where a surf class, for any new move or stance gained, shouts approvals carried on the mosquitoless breeze, cooled as it sails atop the cobalt to cerulean water, blowing in from the east shore where purportedly a two-mile long wave construes itself somewhere near Punta Banco.  This day, this Valentine’s Day continues its languorous, lovely stroll toward its amorous conclusion. The love of nature teaches us much about the nature of love.