departure

and so I left, as quietly as I came.  The immanency of my departure making every word weighted and the love I had to give urgently yearning to be poured out. I was a blip. I was a single puzzle piece from the 1,000 piece puzzle.  I was one voice within a choir.  I was one plane ticket out of thousands.  I was one girl from america there for one week. Insignificant but significant.  Humbled and overjoyed.  Made low and brought to the heights all at once.   Even so, at this point I was leaving behind more than luggage.  This second visit had caused my love for that place, La Romana, Dominican Republic to delve deeper into my very being, to carve itself upon the post and lentil of my heart. The connections I had made, lines I cast, the strings of my heart were now all pulled taught with distance.   The guarantee of seeing these people ever again absent. But it was beautiful, like a firework, short-lived, yes, but brilliant and memorable.  

At 2:30 am the plane lurched toward the runway, and I, inexplicably wide-awake, pressed my perpetually sweaty face to the oval window, which was not much larger.  The runway lights waved me away, and as we broke gravity the excitement that comes with the miracle of flying welled up inside me.  We slid into the air in that hollow aluminum tube, my mind whirring with the impossible physics of it all.  In not so many breaths I could see the street lights, car lights, motor-bike lights spread out beneath me.  I saw miles from my minuscule width of glass.  Where was I seeing?  Had I been there? Was Clara there? Was David there?  Was Estella there?  Was Emilio?  Louis?  Nadia?  Marie? 
How many lives were in my view but absent from my sight right now?
Surely, they were as numerous as the stars that I could see above.
It was as if the strip of darkness that separated the clusters of of stars and the land sprinkled with lights, imitation stars, served as a mirror. 

The two mysteries, the stars and the people, above and below, gazing, mirror-images, at one another.

The lives, miracles on the earth.  Each one burning with passion, the will to thrive, the courage to stand in the face of uncertainty, endurance under hardship, the brilliance of the human spirit.
These were reflected by the audacious stars that refused to be extinguished by the darkness about them.
For at each star's boundary of light, the darkness was forced to stop; it had to bow to the defiant star.

And when I see the sky, indeed, I am not ignorant of the presence of darkness, yet I choose to marvel at the vivid light of each star.

And so, perhaps these people where surrounded by what would be considered "dark" conditions.  Yet, while the conditions were evident to me, I had no choice but to be taken with and marvel at their joy, their passion, their free-flowing laughter, their sound, their shouts of praise, their love, their generosity, their God-given light.

*I, too, have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night, and I have chosen, indeed, to look joyfully at their light.

[*reference to Sarah Williams's poem, "The Old Astronomer"]