Las Amazonas: Second Attempts, Second Sunrise

A waving flashlight from shore

and this enormous boat, multiple times the population of

the Amazon village with a flashlight,

pulls ashore

Or close enough

So we can lay a plank to the approaching canoe

its goods and its passengers become ours

two more hanging their hammocks

two more gently swinging their days and nights

I try to imagine the handful of citizens in this palm roof village, awaiting the occasional passage of a boat--the event of the week when all stops and citizens line to the shore to watch the floating world connecting two Amazon cities.  The hopeful passengers wake before sunrise on the day of the boat's passing, on the chance that we'll pass by at 4, at 5, at 6, at 8.  Waiting. Ready.

The 3½ day boat to Yurimaguas.

 When we boarded early to hang our hammocks we asked ourselves "on which side will the afternoon sun attack on a river that heads West to East in the Southern Hemisphere?"  But there's little "straight" west in the winding Amazon.

I am the only one on the top floor of the boat, which they close at sundown – either for safety or to ensure a bit of quiet below for those choosing to sleep below on the schedule of the sun.  At 5am no one notices me climbing the stairs to the top deck. I take in an hour of quiet before the 6am rowdiness begins with the rising sun. 

The birds and the sounds of the jungle are starting to awake.  A young boy—an early riser—hovers over my shoulder wondering what I'm writing, wondering why I'm writing. In what language?  Perhaps he's reading these very words now. Perhaps he can understand them.  Perhaps he can decipher my handwriting.   WHY is someone--a woman--a gringa--sitting at sunrise with notebook and pen? 

Hello sun on my face.  Hello you who make the morning.

Hello jungle.  Hello endless horizontal sky. 

No mountains nor valley not even a hill cutting you off.

I think the sunrise is what I am trying to pray.

For my parents, for my brother, for my sister-in-law.  For K and D, V and W and L and T and G and D and T and L and G.  For K and T and B.  For R and C and J.  For W and S and R and S, for K, M, J and J.  For U and SL and A.  For J, M and C. For J, C.  The sunrise is what I'm trying to say in my choked unprayerfulness.  I am trying to pray the fresh hope of a predawn glow.  I am trying to pray the redeeming glimmer of first orange spraying the sky.  I am praying the quietness and spacious serenity.  The audacious generosity.  I pray the awaking hum and the joy of the birds in their luminous first day flights.  I'm praying the bright colors that seem renewed, which matters more than if they are.  The new sun has gifted us with new eyes.  New mercies.  New rested bodies, new rested hearts.  New rested hope.  So the jungle shoreline nearly identical to that we saw yesterday is a new maravilla.

The new is what God is trying to tell me—the me stuck in yesterday, me in used-up hope.

This day is unique.  It is the only one.  I stutter at what more than the sunrise to say in my morning prayers, except the obvious, which God, if  there, already knows.  So Beloved Maker, please let your sunrise speak in my silence.

My joyful absence of words. 

New day.