Cancun

From the white sand the palms sway brushing to the rhythm of Caribbean wind,

Calypso swims in the air as the sun- eternal- bakes the skin brown,

Blue, blue, blue ocean condensed into million diamond shimmers towards the shore,

And here I sit in my beautiful wicker chair between bites of ceviche wondering,

Servants dance around me garbed in white uniforms folding their fists over their chests,

A green iguana stares at the scrap of papaya I’ve thrown to the ground; hungers no more,

A black bird steals a packet of sugar from the table without a care,

As a guest I watch a young man scrub the sides of the shallow pool; not a word is spoken,

This is all for me, an American, who braved a flight and Customs,

My dollars for pesos; the math is always changing,

I am king for a week!

I remember the taxi drive from the airport,

Miguel raced like a man possessed through the crowded streets without signal,

The locals wore their backpacks on front or back waiting for a something to happen,

Through broken streets the taxi jostled passing people huddled in dark shops,

Cars were cannibalized; food passed through iron gates; clothes hung on tattered lines,

The buildings’ paint blistered and peeled under the unrelenting sun,

Cracked and crumbling they each had their own mounds of disrepair, 

Like crickets people skittered to and from on a thousand errands of need,

Exotic murals were painted on abandoned five story buildings welcoming,

Here is Paradise!  Cancun!

I take another bite of ceviche and everything becomes bland.