Playa del Carmen, January 2005

by Harriet Geller

We call it a tourist ghetto, but every afternoon
we troop down the arbored walkway, wind through
a herd of bare lounge chairs – facing leeward
like idle cattle in a field – and find our row
of tipsy yellow pallets on the sloping beach
near the surf. Past the hotels, the open sand becomes
a lumpy canvas for tree-size driftwood
and outcroppings of coral, but we choose the comfort
of chairs. With blinders in place, there are only
my friends and the widescreen sea and sky
in colors that rival the blue eyes of movie idols
and make women swoon, a backdrop for white sails
and rainbow chutes hoisting wide-eyed landlubbers
higher than any building on shore.

The last day
we beckon the bow-legged parasail hawker to our lane.
We have taken all our rides, but he grins at another chance
to flirt, bragging about numerous offspring scattered
across the Yucatan, while we admit we are crashers
at the hotel. We are on a week-long retreat,
in the morning curving inward to unhook the past,
and, as the day matures to frame the moon-crowned night,
exposing the dark capsule of our intimacy
for the sun and jello-clear water to swell
and shred into ripples of laughter.

This article appeared in the Summer 2005 IPA Newsletter.