The Daily Poem

THE FUTURE FORTRESS

They marked their time with stone clad battle scars;

From seige to seige their tales of war were told,

But we foretell the future that is ours.

The ancient warriors filled their thirst for gold

And gorged their silver loving belly's fire,

While we design our grasp for taking hold. 

The masons watched their mortared rock aspire

To dizzy heights unknown by men before,

As we with sweatless gaze go high and higher.

The woodwrights carved their faith in bolting doors,

The blacksmiths swung their hopeful hinging gates,

As we release our doves to foreign shores.

The priests and kings divined their willful fates,

Contending eye for eye and tooth for tooth

While our benign derivatives of hate

Look down our nose of orbit lofty sleuth

Through clever skin-like isotopes of truth.

They marked their time with stone clad battle scars,

But we foretell the future that is ours.

D. Edgar Lamp

The Daily Poem - 358

Terzanelle

San Juan, Puerto Rico

Lat: 18.47, Long: -66.11

JOURNAL: Comfort Inn San Juan

San Cristobal fortress.  Lunch at  Yeyos Restaurant.  David and I had roast turkey, rice&beans, and potato salad.  Mimi had morongo.  Rashawna had brochili chicken.  Joanie had BBQ chicken.  I had a pineapple soda to drink.  After lunch we walked to El Morro fortress.  We hopped on the trolley for a ride back. then we stopped at Starbucks for iced lattes.  I've been wearing my boots all day...so hot!  Stopped in a store and tried on a few pairs of sandals.  None fit.

Mike Reyes, aka Mike Goodlooking, a 66 year old great grandfather from New Jersey picked us in his white van talked us all the way to the town of Fajardo at far northeastern corner of the island.  He never asked our names, or referred to all of us as good looking.  "Hey, good looking, let me tell how it is..."  He may as well have been sitting in a rocking chair blowing smoke and stories.  He talked politics, business, history, and baseball.  He told us about his life in New Jersey driving truck for 40 years.  He told us about his four  daughters and his eleven grandchildren.  A man of endless enthusiasm and words, he entertained us all the way.

At Fajardo, he introduced us to our guide, Manolo, who after an abbreviated lesson in kayak navigation took us off into the night over the placid water under a full moon.  We paddled past the moored sailboats in the bay over to a narrow channel that tunneled through the mangrove trees for a half mile to Las Croabas Lagoon, or what is known as Bio Bay because of the bioluminescent plankton that live in it's waters.

"Las Croabas Lagoon in Fajardo has 500,000 to 700,000 of bioluminescent dinoflagellates (a plankton) per gallon, so when you wave your hand through the water you trigger so many of them that your hand lights up with a thousand tiny stars." 

http://www.elyunque.com/biolbay.html

~ The Daily Poet

A LATTE IN YOUR HONOR

A latte in your honor my old friend,

In memory of the memories we have made;

The years have rolled, but love admits no end.

The ancient canvas cannot help but fade,

And neural pathways lose their sharpened groove—

The memory of the memories we have made.

The wind and rain a mountain may remove,

Or rivers carve a canyon through the rock,

While neural pathways lose their sharpened groove

Through ages lost in drought, and blown with chalk,

Refreshing rain no more than thristy dreams

Of rivers carving canyons through the rock.

But now I see you here unchanged it seems,

The living proof that friends endure, although

Refreshing rain, no more than thirsty dreams,

Have vanished into times of long ago.

A latte in your honor my old friend;

You're living proof that friends endure although

The years have rolled—that love admits no end.

~ D. Edgar Lamp (Terzanelle)