Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
The Visitor
Not sure I’ve ever seen her, but the dog food bowl
is empty this morning and her fresh dark prints
paint the white wall out back. She jumps down
at night. I may have seen her once on the hill,
a wild cat, tail thick as a squirrel’s, color of
the mountain. I think of her on Tuesdays at 2pm
as the women play dominos near the pickleball court,
their faces reflected in pickleball-blue, laughing
and chatting. Alone on my balcony, I imagine her
perched over the roofline staring down at me,
eavesdropping on Tchaikovsky, Piano Trio
in A Minor. I think about her clawing her way
in her refuge of rocks above the Pacific, slipping
into my kitchen for leftovers, wandering
ledge to ledge in total darkness or torrential
rain or brazen daylight, chasing mice
over jagged edges, the sun darting orange
light into her eyes. No one will know
whether she survives the season, until enough
time passes that someone like me looking up
at the mountain will notice she’s no longer there
sprinting from rattlesnake to scorpion, deft,
on her own to find water in the desert, the low
amber moon’s heavy crescent on her back.
Whale Watching, La Laguna San Ignacio, Mexico
The walking paths are crushed white shells
Rattling like chains under your step
As wind wheezes through haggard palms
On this cold March morning. You’re wearing
All your clothes, two t-shirts, three sweaters,
A windbreaker. At the Ignacio Springs B&B
They serve sweet lips fish for dinner, rosé
And Costco lemon pie. On the lagoon
Today a grey whale steered her 40-ton body
To place her face in your hand, an inch
Below her left eye, and you felt chosen.
Just 100 whales stay for now as the others go
To Alaska for the summer. A dozen came
To the panga, swimming around, beside
And beneath us, their babies, gliding
And rolling, mothers rubbing their barnacles
On the bottom of the boat as you trailed
Your toes in the water idling, chosen.
And shells on the packed sand spiraled
Into chandeliers, and on the long tope
Filled dirt road back, you sailed, exhausted
From three days of travel, back to the owls,
Roosters and stray dogs barking, the usual
Out of town evening water sounds. You sleep
In a yurt, under a circus ceiling, beneath
Blue and white flowered sheets listening
To the bed springs through your pillow.
And through the window you, chosen, watch
The moon cellophane the river as the last
Of the green-winged teal splashes into night.
Cynthia Good, an award-winning poet, author, journalist and former TV news anchor, has written six books including Vaccinating Your Child, which won the Georgia Author of the Year award. She has launched two magazines, Atlanta Woman and the nationally distributed PINK magazine for working women. Her poems have appeared in journals including Awakenings, Free State Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Main Street Rag, Persimmon Tree, Pedestal Magazine among others. Cynthia’s new chapbook, What We Do with Our Hands, from Finishing Line Press will be published this summer.