HOW LOVELY TO HEAR YOUR TOUCH...

Once, in a distant land and distant time, I was dancing in Bino Realuyo's NYC apartment, in a dim room. I wasn't dancing the dance. I was being (in an action that never again will be replicated) the dance entitled

"Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Kuanyin Shaoling Kung-Fu Fist"

Peeps who knew me long before poetry blogland existed will also recognize the above as the ending to my poem "The Fairy Child's Prayer" (reproduced in Reproductions of the Empty Flagpole). In the same room was Bino of course; I remember him in some one-legged stance...and then the man who was the reason we were both there: Rene Navarro. I call him "Master Dragon". That's him in the photo above with which I began this post--he's formed "Snake Creeps Down" (from the Tai chi chuan 108 movement set of the Yang Family). But I suppose I should share this photo, too, which is more relevant to my poem about him--here he is in a Shaolin martial dance called "Fairy Child Praying to the Goddess of Mercy Guanyin," a Buddhist form:



I don't know where he was when he emailed me today. Perhaps Egypt where he took or was taken in this photo--'twas high noon in Giza:


Rene is Mr. Positive Energy. I am blessed to know him. And from the poem I wrote for him:

Because the sky can never be a margin against my desire, I raise my hand to you and, in so doing, compel the swoop of the falcon with jade eyes, cobalt breast and ebony feathers. I have emptied my bag of tricks, released the barbed wire from its tattooed bracelet about my left wrist. The shade recedes...