Memories of Lanjarón

In Lanjarón there are fountains everywhere

each one has a poem on it, written

in blue, the porcelain gleaming in the sunlight.

Water flows through the city in little channels:

cold, fresh water from the mountains

that loom above the whitewashed town

nestled on a hillside.

I don't know why I just thought of it.

I was teaching, and my students were doing a free write

I thought I'd join them

I just put my pen down, and Spain came out

a memory of spring eleven years ago

on the verge of everything

I closed my eyes and there I was, sipping

frigid water from a bottle, looking at the fountain

trying to read the poem in my not-yet-conversational Spanish

the blue sky teeming with sunlight

color bouncing off everything

so alive

If I could go back to that day

and live everything until this moment again, I don't think

I would change anything.

Nothing about the trip. Nothing about after.

Nothing about my stumbling words

or the car trip to Granada, nothing about

the years that followed, the people, the mistakes.

The years are like water

following a path

flowing from a tap

beneath a poem.