9 out of 10 students at my Title 1 elementary school come from families whose income level meets the federal guidelines for economic poverty.
Paola, an immigrant kid from El Salvador, is one of them.
She is in 1st grade and lives in a small apartment with her grandma, mom, sister and uncle.
The adults in her little family earn less than $26,170 a year.
As her teacher, I struggle against her life-crushing poverty with all of the compassion, creativity and commitment in me.
I’m aware of her poverty.
But today I celebrate her riches.
She is the most valuable kid in the world. (Well, truly, each kid is the most valuable kid in the world, huh?)
She is a first-grade hero.
I wish you could see her compassionate eyes, intuitive mind and ginormous heart.
She meets a new student named Nicholas.
“Hi,” she whispers to him as he sits down beside her. “I’m glad you’re in our class.”
She doesn’t know the story of the suffering that brings him to our school, but perhaps she recognizes something familiar in his taut face, quivering voice and shaking hands.
“This is your journal. It goes in your desk, like this,” she explains.
“These are our crayons and markers. You can use them if you want to. Don’t worry. There’s lots to learn. I’ll help you.”
She reaches out to him.
I’m so thankful for her empathy.
In this moment, she is my teacher and I am her student.
Later, I sit beside her in the lunchroom.
“What made you want to help Nicholas?” I ask.
“Oh, I remember when I was the new student,” she says. “And sometimes I feel the way he looked when he sat down beside me. I just wanted to be kind to him. It helps when people are kind to each other. He’s my neighbor, you know.”
I know.
Yep, I’m aware of Paola’s poverty.
But I’m aware of her riches, too.
I curse her poverty and will fight like hell for free and reduced school breakfasts and lunches, quality public schools, and universal health care.
I bless her soft heart.
I’m thankful it’s full of empathy for the world around her.
I’m thankful for her.
Thanks for showing me the way, Paola.
Friday, July 31, 2020
Thursday, July 30, 2020
School Pictures
“Mr. Barton, is it okay for me to give you your Christmas present now,” asked Brisya.
“Why you thinking about Christmas when it’s not even Halloween yet?” asked an observant student beside her.
“Sure,” I answered. “But why give it to me now? Are you going to visit your family at Christmas time?” I asked.
I thought her family might be traveling to Guatemala to visit relatives at that time, since they are an immigrant family from that Central American country..
“No,” she answered, “We just won’t be in school then, and I just want to make sure you get your present.”
Wow.
She came into the classroom and carefully picked out an object wrapped in newspaper from her backpack.
She gently laid it on my desk.
“May I open it now?” I asked, “Or would you rather me wait until Christmas morning?”
“Oh, you can open it now. You’re welcome to open it. I know it would be hard to wait until Christmas.”
I slowly unwrapped the gift.
There in my hand was a wonderful snow globe. Santa Claus was on the inside surrounded by swirling snow. The word ‘HOPE’ in plastic holly was on the outside.
It is the earliest I have ever received a Christmas present.
The gift itself is a symbol of hope - a snow globe on a 90 + degree South Carolina day.
How deep a hope is that?
The child herself is a symbol of hope, too - a family fleeing violence in Guatemala for the safety of Greenville, South Carolina.
How deep a hope is that?
I call these kinds of moments ‘small spaces.’
They seem small...the giving of a dime store snow globe.
But they are big...the sharing of hope.
They are spaces...places where kindness and understanding are created and shared.
These small spaces are the places that can change the world.
Small Brisya surely changed me today.
Here is a Fibonacci poem I wrote about the small spaces in life.
Look for the small spaces in each moment.
Create them each day.
They
stood
closely,
side by side.
She reached out for him
and took his hand inside of hers.
Their fingers intertwined and their palms made a small space.
The space was warm in the midst of the deep snow that covered the frozen ground of Point Hope,
was warm against the icy wind that blew off the rocking water of the Chukchi Sea.
“Life is in those small places between us,” said the wind.
They stood quietly hand in hand,
holding the small space
between them
holding
warm
hands.
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2019
“Why you thinking about Christmas when it’s not even Halloween yet?” asked an observant student beside her.
“Sure,” I answered. “But why give it to me now? Are you going to visit your family at Christmas time?” I asked.
I thought her family might be traveling to Guatemala to visit relatives at that time, since they are an immigrant family from that Central American country..
“No,” she answered, “We just won’t be in school then, and I just want to make sure you get your present.”
Wow.
She came into the classroom and carefully picked out an object wrapped in newspaper from her backpack.
She gently laid it on my desk.
“May I open it now?” I asked, “Or would you rather me wait until Christmas morning?”
“Oh, you can open it now. You’re welcome to open it. I know it would be hard to wait until Christmas.”
I slowly unwrapped the gift.
There in my hand was a wonderful snow globe. Santa Claus was on the inside surrounded by swirling snow. The word ‘HOPE’ in plastic holly was on the outside.
It is the earliest I have ever received a Christmas present.
The gift itself is a symbol of hope - a snow globe on a 90 + degree South Carolina day.
How deep a hope is that?
The child herself is a symbol of hope, too - a family fleeing violence in Guatemala for the safety of Greenville, South Carolina.
How deep a hope is that?
I call these kinds of moments ‘small spaces.’
They seem small...the giving of a dime store snow globe.
But they are big...the sharing of hope.
They are spaces...places where kindness and understanding are created and shared.
These small spaces are the places that can change the world.
Small Brisya surely changed me today.
Here is a Fibonacci poem I wrote about the small spaces in life.
Look for the small spaces in each moment.
Create them each day.
They
stood
closely,
side by side.
She reached out for him
and took his hand inside of hers.
Their fingers intertwined and their palms made a small space.
The space was warm in the midst of the deep snow that covered the frozen ground of Point Hope,
was warm against the icy wind that blew off the rocking water of the Chukchi Sea.
“Life is in those small places between us,” said the wind.
They stood quietly hand in hand,
holding the small space
between them
holding
warm
hands.
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown eyed girl, 2019
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
The Physics of Friendship
The Physics of Friendship
They looked out the window of the bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.
The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.
Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.
“Wow,” whistled Hilcias softly, “Maybe 52 Blue is there.”
“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I sure hope so.”
People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.
There are five foundational forces in the universe.
They hold everything together.
They can bring order and cause chaos.
Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.
The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet firmly planted on the earth.
The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information in computers, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.
The weak force brings us nuclear energy and makes stars shine.
The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.
The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.
It can only be explained by friendship.
It is love.
Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.
“Where should we go?” asked Taki.
She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.
She was very still and very quiet.
Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.
“I guess we should go to the water,” he whistled, “If we’re going to find 52 Blue.”*
They reached out for each other’s hands.
They walked together down the road toward the gulf.
This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives the possibility of being able to find a lost and lonely whale in the vast reaches of the deep, deep sea.
*There is a whale named 52 Blue.
Scientists named him this because the frequency of his whale song is around 52 MHz.
When other whales sing their songs, they sing at frequencies between 15 and 25 MHz.
His song cannot be heard by any other whale.
He is known as the loneliest whale in the world.
Normally whales are communal creatures.
They live their lives in family groups.
They migrate from warm waters to cooler waters to give birth and find food.
They follow the same migration route from year to year.
52 Blue is different.
He lives alone.
He does not follow a migration route.
He wanders the ocean, a wandering whale.
52 Blue (A fibonacci poem)
whale
song
lonely
where are you?
wandering, singing
singing unheard wandering song
can you hear me? are you there? are you? i am alone
listening, longing for songs gently sung, i hear you song on water, i’m here, i’m here
we sing at diff’rent frequencies, migrate along diff’rent routes, wandering, wondering
unheard, unknown, wandering the sea, songs on water
singing unheard wondering songs
Wondering, singing
who are you?
gentle
song
whale
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories and poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
They looked out the window of the bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.
The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.
Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.
“Wow,” whistled Hilcias softly, “Maybe 52 Blue is there.”
“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I sure hope so.”
People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.
There are five foundational forces in the universe.
They hold everything together.
They can bring order and cause chaos.
Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.
The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet firmly planted on the earth.
The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information in computers, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.
The weak force brings us nuclear energy and makes stars shine.
The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.
The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.
It can only be explained by friendship.
It is love.
Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.
“Where should we go?” asked Taki.
She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.
She was very still and very quiet.
Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.
“I guess we should go to the water,” he whistled, “If we’re going to find 52 Blue.”*
They reached out for each other’s hands.
They walked together down the road toward the gulf.
This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives the possibility of being able to find a lost and lonely whale in the vast reaches of the deep, deep sea.
*There is a whale named 52 Blue.
Scientists named him this because the frequency of his whale song is around 52 MHz.
When other whales sing their songs, they sing at frequencies between 15 and 25 MHz.
His song cannot be heard by any other whale.
He is known as the loneliest whale in the world.
Normally whales are communal creatures.
They live their lives in family groups.
They migrate from warm waters to cooler waters to give birth and find food.
They follow the same migration route from year to year.
52 Blue is different.
He lives alone.
He does not follow a migration route.
He wanders the ocean, a wandering whale.
52 Blue (A fibonacci poem)
whale
song
lonely
where are you?
wandering, singing
singing unheard wandering song
can you hear me? are you there? are you? i am alone
listening, longing for songs gently sung, i hear you song on water, i’m here, i’m here
we sing at diff’rent frequencies, migrate along diff’rent routes, wandering, wondering
unheard, unknown, wandering the sea, songs on water
singing unheard wondering songs
Wondering, singing
who are you?
gentle
song
whale
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories and poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
School Pictures
One of my students is from Peru.
He has been in the United Stated for a little over a year.
How can I describe him?
He has a bowl haircut, and his bangs zig zag across his forehead in an endearing kind of way.
His eyes are the brown of the dirt paths that led up the mountain to his highland village home. They are deep and kind.
His smile is like the sunshine and his laugh is like a cool, refreshing breeze.
I just chose him as a Terrific Kid from my classroom, an award that I’m sure will bring out that smile and laughter for an entire day.
Everyone who meets him knows he is a special kid, one of those people who are born into the world to make it a better place.
I asked him to tell me his story so I could help him write it down.
“When I lived in Peru, I lived in a mountain village,” he said. “The ground was very rocky. We were all very poor.”
“It is good for us to live in America, because my papí and mamí can make a little money,” he continued.
“One time, my mamí went for a job and someone said, ‘No, we don’t want you here,’ and she came home and cried.”
“But I’m glad you want me here, Mr. Barton.”
My heart swelled and sank at the same time.
Has that ever happened to you?
It happens to me often as I read the lives of the students I teach and travel the road of life with them.
He has been in the United Stated for a little over a year.
How can I describe him?
He has a bowl haircut, and his bangs zig zag across his forehead in an endearing kind of way.
His eyes are the brown of the dirt paths that led up the mountain to his highland village home. They are deep and kind.
His smile is like the sunshine and his laugh is like a cool, refreshing breeze.
I just chose him as a Terrific Kid from my classroom, an award that I’m sure will bring out that smile and laughter for an entire day.
Everyone who meets him knows he is a special kid, one of those people who are born into the world to make it a better place.
I asked him to tell me his story so I could help him write it down.
“When I lived in Peru, I lived in a mountain village,” he said. “The ground was very rocky. We were all very poor.”
“It is good for us to live in America, because my papí and mamí can make a little money,” he continued.
“One time, my mamí went for a job and someone said, ‘No, we don’t want you here,’ and she came home and cried.”
“But I’m glad you want me here, Mr. Barton.”
My heart swelled and sank at the same time.
Has that ever happened to you?
It happens to me often as I read the lives of the students I teach and travel the road of life with them.
Friday, July 24, 2020
Aakaaluk
Taki was beautiful.
She was beautiful on the outside, with black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin against the white snow.
She was beautiful on the inside, with a warm heart beating steadily against the Arctic cold.
When she was born, her aaka, her mother, swaddled her in a blanket her aakaaluk, her grandmother, sewed for her.
The blanket was red, the color of the sky over Point Hope at dusk, just before the night sky blanketed the people in frozen darkness.
Across the blanket, stitched with bright yellow thread, were the three Arctic whales - the beluga, the bowhead, and the narwhal.
“With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and music into the life of the baby,” she whispered, “for the beluga look quizzically at you and sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.
With the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead’s scientific name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it’s wonderful, mysterious ways. It lives longer than any creature on Earth, for it’s heart beats slow and strong in the cold, cold waters.
And with the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it’s own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.”
There were two narwhal whales.
The long tooth of one of the narwhal's, the one that extends out from the whale's upper lip, the one that makes the whale look like the unicorn of the sea, was broken.
Taki's aakaaluk was an artist with needle and thread.
She sewed the hurt and despair of the wounded whale into it's face so you could feel it's pain just by looking at it.
In the face of the other whale she sewed compassion and hope as it placed it's own tooth into the hole of the broken tooth to assuage the pain of her friend.
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
She was beautiful on the outside, with black hair, brown eyes, and dark skin against the white snow.
She was beautiful on the inside, with a warm heart beating steadily against the Arctic cold.
When she was born, her aaka, her mother, swaddled her in a blanket her aakaaluk, her grandmother, sewed for her.
The blanket was red, the color of the sky over Point Hope at dusk, just before the night sky blanketed the people in frozen darkness.
Across the blanket, stitched with bright yellow thread, were the three Arctic whales - the beluga, the bowhead, and the narwhal.
“With the beluga whale, I hope curiosity and music into the life of the baby,” she whispered, “for the beluga look quizzically at you and sing songs that cause us to call them the canaries of the sea.
With the bowhead whale, I hope mystery and endurance into the life of the baby, for the bowhead’s scientific name is Balaena mysticetus and that best describes it’s wonderful, mysterious ways. It lives longer than any creature on Earth, for it’s heart beats slow and strong in the cold, cold waters.
And with the narwhal whale, I hope compassion and empathy into the life of the baby, for the narwhal will place the tip of it’s own hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of another narwhal to ease it’s suffering and pain.”
There were two narwhal whales.
The long tooth of one of the narwhal's, the one that extends out from the whale's upper lip, the one that makes the whale look like the unicorn of the sea, was broken.
Taki's aakaaluk was an artist with needle and thread.
She sewed the hurt and despair of the wounded whale into it's face so you could feel it's pain just by looking at it.
In the face of the other whale she sewed compassion and hope as it placed it's own tooth into the hole of the broken tooth to assuage the pain of her friend.
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
52 Blue
whale
song
lonely
where are you?
wandering, singing
singing unheard wandering song
can you hear me? are you there? are you? i am alone
listening, longing for songs gently sung, i hear you song on water, i’m here, i’m here
we sing at diff’rent frequencies, migrate along diff’rent routes, wandering, wondering
unheard, unknown, wandering the sea, songs on water
singing unheard wondering songs
Wondering, singing
who are you?
gentle
song
whale
Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Trees
Taki put the palm of her hand on the trunk of the tree.
"When I was an agnaiyaaq, a little girl, my aaka held this hand and walked with me outside of Point Hope," she said, "and talked with me about the plants around us, the ones animals can and cannot eat, the ones people can and cannot eat, the ones animals and people can use for medicine.
This, Hilcias, is called the Balm of Gilead tree."
Hilcias looked closely at the buds on the lower branches of the tree and breathed deeply the sweet smell of the resin.
He whistled for the wonder of it all.
"Balm of Gilead resin can soothe a cough or keep a small wound or cut or scrape from getting infected.
Maybe it could help a mute boy from El Salvador talk, huh?
Just kidding.
You can rub the resin on your skin or gargle it with water and it helps relieve burns and sore throats.
It grows here even out of the hard, frozen land.
Look at the heart shaped leaves. They remind us that the heart is the place where we learn to share, cooperate, take responsibility, avoid conflict and respect others, all of the qualities the old ones try to pass along to us.
Aaka told me, she said, 'Taki, these are the values of The People. They keep hearts beating and life living in these frozen, Arctic lands.'"
Taki closed her eyes.
She put her ear on the smooth, light brown bark of the tree.
"I hear the tree," she whispered. "It is saying, 'Take only what you need from nature. Use what you have to help others. Always speak your own language.'"
Hilcias put the fingers of his hand on the petals of the flower.
"When I was a niño pequeño, a little boy, my abuelo held this hand and walked me outside of the migrant camps where we stayed," he whistled, "and taught me about the plants around us there, the ones you can eat, the ones you can use for medicine.
This is the izote flower.
It's the national flower of El Salvador."
Taki looked at the milky, bell shaped flowers clustered above the leaves of the plant.
She breathed in the sweet smell of the flowers.
"You can eat the flowers and they help relieve arthritis and headaches.
You can break the stems, plant them in the ground, and they will take root and grow new leaves and flowers."
Look at the sword shaped leaves," whistled Hilcias softly. "They remind us of our will to live. They remind us that the pen is a sword and that we can write stories to help us understand each other and be kind to each other."
He closed his eyes.
He put his ear to the evergreen leaves.
Their sharp spines pricked his skin.
"I hear the flowers," he whistled. "They're saying, 'Give ingenuity, beauty and wonder to world with the simplicity, plainness and ordinariness of your own language...of you.'"
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Talki’s Poem
Taki saw Hilcias standing on the rocks that connected her land with the water.
The wind blew off the icy sea and whipped his body until it looked as if he might become a part of the sand, salt and sea that made up the Arctic land.
The three shirts and one coat he owned weren’t enough to protect him from the cold, and the skin of his cheeks and the water in his eyes froze with the sunset.
“He looks so small against the sky and the sea,” she thought.
“He looks so weak against the rocks and the ground.”
Small, weak things struggled to survive around the Chukchi Sea, she knew.
Her heart was big and strong, and that’s what helped her live in this icy cold place.
In the old language she thought of the words ‘heart’ and ‘strong,’ uumman and sanyiruq.
She wrote this poem for Hilcias -
we
stand
closely
side by side
I reach out for you
and take your hand inside of mine
our fingers intertwine and our palms make a small space
this space is warm in the deep snow that covers the ground of Point Hope
is warm against the icy wind that blows off the rocking waters of the Chukchi Sea
“life is in these small spaces between us,” I whisper
we stand quietly hand in hand
with the small space, and
then we smile
holding
small
space
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown eyed girl, 2020
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Point Hope
They
stood
closely,
side by side.
She reached out for him
and took his hand inside of hers.
Their fingers intertwined and their palms made a small space.
This space was warm in the midst of the deep snow that covered the frozen ground of Point Hope,
was warm against the icy wind that blew off the rocking waters of the Chukchi Sea.
"Life is in those small spaces between us," said the wind.
They stood quietly hand in hand,
holding the small space
between them
holding
warm
hands.
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Hilcias on the Bus 3
They looked out the window of the bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.
The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.
Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.
“Wow,” whistled Hilcias softly, “Maybe 52 Blue is there.”
“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I sure hope so.”
People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.
There are five foundational forces in the universe.
They hold everything together.
They can bring order and cause chaos.
Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.
The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet firmly planted on the earth.
The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information in computers, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.
The weak force brings us nuclear energy and makes stars shine.
The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.
The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.
It can only be explained by friendship.
It is love.
Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.
“Where should we go?” asked Taki.
She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.
She was very still and very quiet.
Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.
“I guess we should go to the water,” he whistled, “If we’re going to find 52 Blue.”
They reached out for each other’s hands.
They walked together down the road toward the gulf.
This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives the possibility of being able to find a lost and lonely whale in the vast reaches of the deep, deep sea.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.
Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.
“Wow,” whistled Hilcias softly, “Maybe 52 Blue is there.”
“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I sure hope so.”
People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.
There are five foundational forces in the universe.
They hold everything together.
They can bring order and cause chaos.
Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.
The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet firmly planted on the earth.
The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information in computers, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.
The weak force brings us nuclear energy and makes stars shine.
The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.
The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.
It can only be explained by friendship.
It is love.
Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.
“Where should we go?” asked Taki.
She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.
She was very still and very quiet.
Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.
“I guess we should go to the water,” he whistled, “If we’re going to find 52 Blue.”
They reached out for each other’s hands.
They walked together down the road toward the gulf.
This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives the possibility of being able to find a lost and lonely whale in the vast reaches of the deep, deep sea.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Hilcias on the Bus
The Greyhound bus chugged out of the station in downtown Charleston into the South Carolina night. There were 4,000 miles between Charleston and Point Hope.
"That's about how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Hilcias. "If they can make it, maybe I can make it, too."
This first part of the journey would take four days. He closed his eyes. He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road, listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him, and swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night drivers. He drifted off to sleep and became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along at 14 miles per hour, the songs from other blue whales from different waters touching his great heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the Pacific Ocean waters.
He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder.
"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."
He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.
There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead. They didn't seem to be wrinkles of worry that he'd seen on his mamí’s and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small Southern towns. No, they seemed to be wrinkles of kindness that might have come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear or touch the beauty they hold.
She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink, and her head nodded to each passing mile along the highway. Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road. The bus moved around a curve and she slid ever so slightly against Hilcias’ body. His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breast and his smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck. Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that no one who was not as close to her as Hilcias could hear it. Hilcias not only heard it but also understood the story the whistles told.
Here is that story.
- When my chi'ren were yo age, they walked to school 'long a dirt road. 'Bout haf way dere, a school bus'd pass dem by, ev'ry day. It'd stir up mo dust'n you evah seen'n yo life and dat dust'd swirl 'round my chi'ren, cling to dey skin, and turn de water in dey eyes to mud. "Why won't dat bus stop and pick us up, momma?" dey asked me.
Well, I knew dey'd come a day when I'd haf to sit wid'em at de table and tell'em 'bout de way things was, 'bout how a school bus wit white chi'ren on it couldn't haf black chi'ren on it, too, 'cause dats de laws of men's hearts.
But I know'd dat day hadn't come quite yet. I hoped so much in my own heart dat 'fore dat day came, a new day's come when de laws of God's heart'd overcome de laws of men's hearts and dat bus'd stop, op'n it's doors, and welcome my chi'ren on board.
"Don't you all worry 'bout dat bus now, you hear?" I answered my chi'ren. "Lissen now, when dat bus passes you by, you stop for a minit and think 'bout dat dust all 'round you. Breathe deep and let it come into yo lungs 'till you breathe it out wit yo breath. Den take de back a yo hands n'rub'em in you wat'ry eyes 'till de mud comes off on 'em. You think 'bout dat dust and dat mud. You 'member dat dust is made up'a tiny little dust particles, so small you cain't see 'em 'less dey all together. And you 'member dat mud is what we all made of, all of us, folks inside de bus n outside de bus, and one kind'a mud ain't superior to another kind'a mud, it's all just de stuff God made us out of. 'Member dat, my loves. 'Member dat."
Hilcias listened to her sleeping, listened to the soft whistles of her breathing, listened to her face, and he loved her.
"A blue whale's heart is as big as a Volkswagon Bug," he thought. "It must feel love very deeply and widely, because it's heart is so deep and wide. My heart is just the size of my fist. I don't think it can hold as much love as a blue whale's heart. I surely feel a deep and wide love for her, though."
"Where could this love come from?" he thought. "I don't know. Maybe it's because we're both small, quiet ones who no one sees or hears, in our own ways. I hope I'm as beautiful as her. I hope I whistle the same beautiful song as her."
He put his tiny hand on top of hers.
You've heard of the narwhal whale, haven't you? Along with the bowhead and beluga whales, it is an Arctic whale, living all it's life in the icy waters of the Arctic ocean. It's called the unicorn of the sea because it has a single horn that protrudes up to nine feet out of it's forehead. In older days, it's horn was given to the kings and queens of Europe to use as scepters, for many thought there was great power and even magic in it.
It's not really a horn, though. It's a tooth. Like a human tooth, it is very, very sensitive. If a narwhal tooth breaks, it causes the poor narwhal a sharp and abiding pain. When that break happens, an amazing thing happens in the life of narwhals. Another narwhal places it's tooth into the broken tooth of the hurting narwhal and that act of kindness assuages the pain.
He hoped his hand might somehow assuage her pain, too.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
"That's about how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Hilcias. "If they can make it, maybe I can make it, too."
This first part of the journey would take four days. He closed his eyes. He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road, listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him, and swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night drivers. He drifted off to sleep and became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along at 14 miles per hour, the songs from other blue whales from different waters touching his great heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the Pacific Ocean waters.
He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder.
"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."
He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.
There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead. They didn't seem to be wrinkles of worry that he'd seen on his mamí’s and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small Southern towns. No, they seemed to be wrinkles of kindness that might have come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear or touch the beauty they hold.
She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink, and her head nodded to each passing mile along the highway. Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road. The bus moved around a curve and she slid ever so slightly against Hilcias’ body. His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breast and his smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck. Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that no one who was not as close to her as Hilcias could hear it. Hilcias not only heard it but also understood the story the whistles told.
Here is that story.
- When my chi'ren were yo age, they walked to school 'long a dirt road. 'Bout haf way dere, a school bus'd pass dem by, ev'ry day. It'd stir up mo dust'n you evah seen'n yo life and dat dust'd swirl 'round my chi'ren, cling to dey skin, and turn de water in dey eyes to mud. "Why won't dat bus stop and pick us up, momma?" dey asked me.
Well, I knew dey'd come a day when I'd haf to sit wid'em at de table and tell'em 'bout de way things was, 'bout how a school bus wit white chi'ren on it couldn't haf black chi'ren on it, too, 'cause dats de laws of men's hearts.
But I know'd dat day hadn't come quite yet. I hoped so much in my own heart dat 'fore dat day came, a new day's come when de laws of God's heart'd overcome de laws of men's hearts and dat bus'd stop, op'n it's doors, and welcome my chi'ren on board.
"Don't you all worry 'bout dat bus now, you hear?" I answered my chi'ren. "Lissen now, when dat bus passes you by, you stop for a minit and think 'bout dat dust all 'round you. Breathe deep and let it come into yo lungs 'till you breathe it out wit yo breath. Den take de back a yo hands n'rub'em in you wat'ry eyes 'till de mud comes off on 'em. You think 'bout dat dust and dat mud. You 'member dat dust is made up'a tiny little dust particles, so small you cain't see 'em 'less dey all together. And you 'member dat mud is what we all made of, all of us, folks inside de bus n outside de bus, and one kind'a mud ain't superior to another kind'a mud, it's all just de stuff God made us out of. 'Member dat, my loves. 'Member dat."
Hilcias listened to her sleeping, listened to the soft whistles of her breathing, listened to her face, and he loved her.
"A blue whale's heart is as big as a Volkswagon Bug," he thought. "It must feel love very deeply and widely, because it's heart is so deep and wide. My heart is just the size of my fist. I don't think it can hold as much love as a blue whale's heart. I surely feel a deep and wide love for her, though."
"Where could this love come from?" he thought. "I don't know. Maybe it's because we're both small, quiet ones who no one sees or hears, in our own ways. I hope I'm as beautiful as her. I hope I whistle the same beautiful song as her."
He put his tiny hand on top of hers.
You've heard of the narwhal whale, haven't you? Along with the bowhead and beluga whales, it is an Arctic whale, living all it's life in the icy waters of the Arctic ocean. It's called the unicorn of the sea because it has a single horn that protrudes up to nine feet out of it's forehead. In older days, it's horn was given to the kings and queens of Europe to use as scepters, for many thought there was great power and even magic in it.
It's not really a horn, though. It's a tooth. Like a human tooth, it is very, very sensitive. If a narwhal tooth breaks, it causes the poor narwhal a sharp and abiding pain. When that break happens, an amazing thing happens in the life of narwhals. Another narwhal places it's tooth into the broken tooth of the hurting narwhal and that act of kindness assuages the pain.
He hoped his hand might somehow assuage her pain, too.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Hilcias on the Bus 2
Hilcias’ eyes opened to the smell around him.
He rubbed the sleep out of of his eyes with the back of his hand and saw a wiry man with greasy, slicked back hair smelling of body odor and cigarette smoke sitting beside him.
The man was directing a woman holding an infant in one arm and the hand of a toddler with her other hand to sit in the seat in front of them.
He was also directing a boy and a girl about Hilcias’ age to sit beside them.
And a teenage girl and boy to sit behind them.
None of them were paying any attention to the man, but he kept on talking as if they couldn’t function without him.
“Lissen yere,” he said a bit too loudly. “Git yourselfs settled down now. We got a ways to go, and we don’t need no cryin’, wigglin’, playin’ nor poutin’. Hope we’ll be thar ‘fore nightfall.”
The man had one bag, a tattered olive green rucksack that looked as if it had seen action in the Vietnam War, that must have held the traveling goods of the whole family of seven.
He tried to stuff it in the luggage bin above his head, giving it a hard whack with his bony fist as the driver moved toward him telling him it wouldn’t fit and that he’d have to put it in the storage compartment below the bus.
“Well god dammit then,” cursed the man, “Least let me git out the bottle o’ formla for the baby. It belongs to this yere girl. You can see she ain’t old ‘nough to make no milk so we got to feed this yere ‘spensive stuff.”
The teenaged girl turned bright red, her ears the color of the tomatoes he and his mamí and his abuelo picked on the farms in the summers, as the man looked away from her and back to the bus driver, who was wrestling the bag back up the aisle to the door.
The other passengers had to lean toward the windows as he passed by.
Hilcias wondered if they did this because of the size of the bag or the smell of it, for it had taken on the odor of it’s owners.
“Wait one more minute, thar,” commanded the man.
The driver ignored him in much the same way as his family did.
“Well shit,” the man sighed as he collapsed beside Hilcias.
“I needed my Bible out from thar,” he whispered. “It’s good luck to hold it when our lives are in the hands o’ somebody like that thar driver,” he winked at Hilcias.
Within a minute, the man’s head dropped back against the padded seat of the bus and was asleep.
Hilcias listened carefully and heard a crackling in the man’s lungs and a whoosh click in the man’s heart.
“Hmmm,” thought Hilcias, “This man has had a hard life. He’s too young for his body to sound like that.”
The teenaged boy who was sitting behind Hilcias leaned over the seat and put his hand on his shoulder.
He pushed until Hilcias turned and looked at him.
“Hey, you one’nem Meckicans, ain’t you? You speak English or only Meckican?”
Hilcias looked into the boy’s cloudless blue eyes.
What he saw there surprised him.
The teenaged boy’s question was a question of curiosity, not a question of suspicion.
The boy had heard those words before, though not in a question but in an accusation.
By a whole community.
“Look at them damn Meckicans,” he had heard. “They come here to ‘Merica and take everthin’ from us and don’t give nothin’ back.”
“How could I change his mind?” thought Hilcias.
Hilcias smiled at him and turned back toward the road in front of them.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2019
Monday, July 20, 2020
Hilcias the Silent
Hilcias studied the yellowing eye chart on the back of the closed door of the room at the Barrier Island Free Medical Clinic and practiced saying the letters in his mind, from Spanish to English, from English back to Spanish, until he could think them into a seamless line.
His mamí flipped through the pages of an old Life Magazine with an immigrant mother and child on the cover.
His abuelo stared at a watercolor painting on the wall of a heavy laden peach tree, the colors of the ripe peaches glowing brightly against the white walls of the room, and then clasped his hands in his lap and looked thoughtfully into them as if he were looking into the deepest parts of the earth.
There was a tap on the door.
A young doctor walked into the room.
“Buenos Dias, amigos,” she said. “Me llamo Maria. Como estas ustedes?”
She had eyes like his abuelo, deep and earthy brown.
She wore a white doctor’s coat, faded blue jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes.
“Well,” she began, “Let’s talk about Hilcias.
We looked over his brain scans and studied them very carefully. We didn’t find any organic reason why he doesn’t speak. The other tests on his ears, nose and throat came back normal, too. So all of the parts that help him speak are well and good inside of him.”
His mamí put her arm around his shoulder, held him close to her, and breathed out a long, slow, quiet sigh of relief.
“But we still haven’t answered the question,” continued Dr. Maria. “Why doesn’t Hilcias speak?”
She pulled up a chair in front of him, sat down in it, and leaned her face close to his face until her nose gently brushed against his nose.
“So now we’ve got to walk together down a path into places we don’t know,” she smiled. “The only person who can tell us why he’s not talking…is not talking.”
He smiled back at her and looked away from her eyes and down at her feet.
Suddenly, he whistled the most beautiful notes Dr. Maria had ever heard in her life.
They reminded her of the joy she felt as a little girl standing in the fields with her family on their farm in El Salvador.
At the same time, they reminded her of the sadness she felt as she worked day after day to help person after person who was just trying to make a better life in a place where it was hard to live.
The music brought a stillness and a quietness to the room.
After a moment, his abuelo spoke.
“He says he does speak, but not many people understand him, I think.”
And it was true.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
His mamí flipped through the pages of an old Life Magazine with an immigrant mother and child on the cover.
His abuelo stared at a watercolor painting on the wall of a heavy laden peach tree, the colors of the ripe peaches glowing brightly against the white walls of the room, and then clasped his hands in his lap and looked thoughtfully into them as if he were looking into the deepest parts of the earth.
There was a tap on the door.
A young doctor walked into the room.
“Buenos Dias, amigos,” she said. “Me llamo Maria. Como estas ustedes?”
She had eyes like his abuelo, deep and earthy brown.
She wore a white doctor’s coat, faded blue jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes.
“Well,” she began, “Let’s talk about Hilcias.
We looked over his brain scans and studied them very carefully. We didn’t find any organic reason why he doesn’t speak. The other tests on his ears, nose and throat came back normal, too. So all of the parts that help him speak are well and good inside of him.”
His mamí put her arm around his shoulder, held him close to her, and breathed out a long, slow, quiet sigh of relief.
“But we still haven’t answered the question,” continued Dr. Maria. “Why doesn’t Hilcias speak?”
She pulled up a chair in front of him, sat down in it, and leaned her face close to his face until her nose gently brushed against his nose.
“So now we’ve got to walk together down a path into places we don’t know,” she smiled. “The only person who can tell us why he’s not talking…is not talking.”
He smiled back at her and looked away from her eyes and down at her feet.
Suddenly, he whistled the most beautiful notes Dr. Maria had ever heard in her life.
They reminded her of the joy she felt as a little girl standing in the fields with her family on their farm in El Salvador.
At the same time, they reminded her of the sadness she felt as she worked day after day to help person after person who was just trying to make a better life in a place where it was hard to live.
The music brought a stillness and a quietness to the room.
After a moment, his abuelo spoke.
“He says he does speak, but not many people understand him, I think.”
And it was true.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Hilcias and the Whales
a small part of a novel in the works ✏️
Hilcias loved whales.
He walked beside his abuelo down rows and rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale stitched onto the front of it.
“A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”
“A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much.”
“A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it,” he whistled.
“Boy,” his abuelo smiled, “you must be whistling about whales.”
Now, as he sat beside his side of the Atlantic Ocean in a state park on Kiawah Island, something wonderful happened.
A gigantic tooth and a mysterious conch shell washed up with the waves onto the shore.
He was astonished.
The tooth was a sperm whale's tooth, of this he was sure.
The sperm whale was one of his favorite whales.
The first picture he ever drew of a whale, before he visited the public library and checked out every book he found about whales, was a picture of a sperm whale.
This was before he learned that the brightness of a light bulb is measured by a lumen, which is simply the light one cup of sperm whale oil gives off.
This was before he memorized the field guide to the whales of the world.
This was before he sketched a picture of how he thought a whale should look, a sketch that was a picture of a sperm whale.
He picked up the tooth with both hands.
It was almost a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory.
"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws, only slots that the teeth from the lower jaws fit into.
If I sliced the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale as the rings of a trunk show the age of the tree.”
He gently laid the tooth beside him on the sand.
He picked up the conch shell with both of his hands, too.
"What a wonderful shell,” he thought. “Look at it’s shape and color.”
The shape was a common shape in nature, formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, the Fibonacci numbers, a special shape that appears many times in geometry, architecture, art and music.
Some people call the shape ‘God’s blueprint,’ because it seems to be the plan from which God creates the world.
It's color was a common color in nature, too.
It was three shades of yellow.
It's spine was the brilliant yellow of the sun that rose that very morning.
It's siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in early August.
It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a summer field.
He raised it to his tiny ear.
Someone told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean inside of it.
"I wonder if it's true," he thought.
"If it is, I can take it home to our bus and bring the the great whales with me.”
He expected to hear only the ocean.
Boy, was he surprised.
The sound he heard inside the shell wasn’t only of breaking waves and rolling tides.
There was also a song.
It was the most beautiful song he had ever heard.
He closed his eyes and saw the notes dancing before him.
“This song comes from a humpback whale,” he thought.
“I...understand it.
I understand it!”
The whale sang to him in his own language, with his own whistles!
They were notes of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation, understanding - all of the notes he whistled, all of the notes that made up his life, all of the notes that he whistled to the world but that the world couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
All of those notes came back to him in the song of the humpback whale.
A tear rolled down his cheek.
He wept as if all of the hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness, sadness and loneliness poured out of him onto the sand and into the vast reaches of the waters of the ocean.
“I hear you!
I understand you!” he whistled into the shell.
To his great surprise, he heard a response.
“I hear you, too!
I understand you!
Finally, we’ve found you!”
A sperm whale, a humpback whale and a blue whale surfaced out beyond the waves.
“There’s a story we tell along our migratory way,” sang the blue whale, “about a boy on land, a boy who can sing our language, a boy who can understand our songs, a boy...who is hope.
You’re that boy, Hilcias.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“But, how?”
“We’re looking for the world’s loneliest whale,” sang the blue whale.
“We call him 52 Blue because he sings at a frequency we can’t hear.
But you’ll be able to hear him.
And he’ll be able to hear you.”
And we’ll be able to help him find a family.”
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Hilcias loved whales.
He walked beside his abuelo down rows and rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale stitched onto the front of it.
“A blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.”
“A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much.”
“A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it,” he whistled.
“Boy,” his abuelo smiled, “you must be whistling about whales.”
Now, as he sat beside his side of the Atlantic Ocean in a state park on Kiawah Island, something wonderful happened.
A gigantic tooth and a mysterious conch shell washed up with the waves onto the shore.
He was astonished.
The tooth was a sperm whale's tooth, of this he was sure.
The sperm whale was one of his favorite whales.
The first picture he ever drew of a whale, before he visited the public library and checked out every book he found about whales, was a picture of a sperm whale.
This was before he learned that the brightness of a light bulb is measured by a lumen, which is simply the light one cup of sperm whale oil gives off.
This was before he memorized the field guide to the whales of the world.
This was before he sketched a picture of how he thought a whale should look, a sketch that was a picture of a sperm whale.
He picked up the tooth with both hands.
It was almost a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory.
"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws, only slots that the teeth from the lower jaws fit into.
If I sliced the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale as the rings of a trunk show the age of the tree.”
He gently laid the tooth beside him on the sand.
He picked up the conch shell with both of his hands, too.
"What a wonderful shell,” he thought. “Look at it’s shape and color.”
The shape was a common shape in nature, formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on, the Fibonacci numbers, a special shape that appears many times in geometry, architecture, art and music.
Some people call the shape ‘God’s blueprint,’ because it seems to be the plan from which God creates the world.
It's color was a common color in nature, too.
It was three shades of yellow.
It's spine was the brilliant yellow of the sun that rose that very morning.
It's siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in early August.
It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a summer field.
He raised it to his tiny ear.
Someone told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear, you can hear the ocean inside of it.
"I wonder if it's true," he thought.
"If it is, I can take it home to our bus and bring the the great whales with me.”
He expected to hear only the ocean.
Boy, was he surprised.
The sound he heard inside the shell wasn’t only of breaking waves and rolling tides.
There was also a song.
It was the most beautiful song he had ever heard.
He closed his eyes and saw the notes dancing before him.
“This song comes from a humpback whale,” he thought.
“I...understand it.
I understand it!”
The whale sang to him in his own language, with his own whistles!
They were notes of love, forgiveness, faith, hope, light, joy, consolation, understanding - all of the notes he whistled, all of the notes that made up his life, all of the notes that he whistled to the world but that the world couldn’t or wouldn’t understand.
All of those notes came back to him in the song of the humpback whale.
A tear rolled down his cheek.
He wept as if all of the hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness, sadness and loneliness poured out of him onto the sand and into the vast reaches of the waters of the ocean.
“I hear you!
I understand you!” he whistled into the shell.
To his great surprise, he heard a response.
“I hear you, too!
I understand you!
Finally, we’ve found you!”
A sperm whale, a humpback whale and a blue whale surfaced out beyond the waves.
“There’s a story we tell along our migratory way,” sang the blue whale, “about a boy on land, a boy who can sing our language, a boy who can understand our songs, a boy...who is hope.
You’re that boy, Hilcias.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“But, how?”
“We’re looking for the world’s loneliest whale,” sang the blue whale.
“We call him 52 Blue because he sings at a frequency we can’t hear.
But you’ll be able to hear him.
And he’ll be able to hear you.”
And we’ll be able to help him find a family.”
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Whales Sing
Whales sing.
We know this because of the life and work of Katy Payne.
She is a scientist who lived and worked on the coast of Argentina.
She studied the whales that migrated along that coast.
She loved those whales.
In 1964, she took a trip to Bermuda to meet with a Navy engineer named Frank Watlington, who also loved whales. He was recording with underwater microphones called hydrophones, which were tools the U.S. Navy used to listen for Soviet submarines during the Cold War. It was during this recording that he picked up the sound of a humpback whale.
When Payne boarded Watlington’s ship, she didn’t know they’d be listening to anything.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard the sound whales make, have you?” asked Watlington.
He played the sound of the humpback whale for her.
Payne would later say, “I had never heard anything like it. Oh, my God, tears flowed down my cheeks. I was just completely transfixed and amazed because the sounds are so beautiful, so powerful - so variable. They were, as I learned later, the sounds of just one animal. Just one animal.”
Up until that moment, Watlington had kept the recordings a secret. He was afraid whalers would use his discovery to help them hunt and kill whales. He gave the recording to Payne.
“Go and save the whales,” he told her.
There was something peculiar about the sounds that Payne didn’t recognize at first.
It took special ears and knowledge to find it.
She had both.
She had grown up on a farm and gone to college to study music and biology.
She would become an acoustic biologist, and spend her life watching and listening to elephants and whales, an amazing thing for a human being to do.
As she listened to the humpback whale, she wanted to see the sounds.
She used a spectrogram to see pictures of their peaks, valleys and gaps.
She traced them with a pencil on the paper and began to see structure, a structure that looked like rhythms and melodies.
“The whale is singing a song,” she whispered.
Whales sing.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Friday, July 17, 2020
The Stranger
The Stranger
You are the tears in the eyes of the child who scrapes her knee; you are the smells in the tattered clothes of the broken man who sips his wine; you are the curses in the mouths of the teens who hang out on the corner; you are the breath in the life of the old woman who dies.
Go away from me.
No. I will go away from you.
I will go to a place with no scraped knees, smelly drunks, arrogant kids, dying women.
I will make a woundless, pleasant, respectable, happy place for me.
A wound that cannot be seen; a stench that cannot be smelled; an arrogance clothed in niceties; a life that is death or a death that is life dying slowly - self-created, self-preserved, selfish.
May your tears wash me; gently lay your dirty coat over me for I am cold; curse away my own arrogance until my heart can hear your blessing.
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
We Will Have Water
We Will Have Water
The ground is dry.
A drought of biblical proportions has gripped the land, and the people, the poor people, who struggle for their daily bread, must now struggle for water.
Water, a mist down from the mountains, or in from the sea, drifts over the land, and over the people, the poor people, who thirst for a drink of cool, clean water that just won't fall.
See the woman, the poor woman, walking on rocks and dust, searching for water. Don't see through your eyes. See through her eyes, and look and look for water that is there, but isn't.
Hear the children, the poor children, asking for water, rolling their wheels in the dust. Don't hear through your ears. Hear through their ears, and listen for water that is there, but isn't.
Touch the hands, the hands of the men, the poor men, planting their fields in the dust. Don't touch them with your hands. Touch through their hands, and feel the ground for water that is there, but isn't.
Smell the air, the dust from the ground, the mist in the sky, and breathe in the dusty mist, and gasp until your lungs weep without tears, crying for water. Don't breathe with your lungs. Breathe through their lungs, and gasp for water that is there, but isn't.
Taste the water? No, there is no water for them, though there is water. Cry out for cool, clear water streaming over your face and onto your tongue, quenching the thirst of your family, of you, with water.
Water that is here, but isn't.
The people, the poor people, touch the hems of the garments of the few who have water, cool clean water.
"Yes, you will have water, but not yet, not in the here and now, only in the there and then."
"No, we will have water, already, not in the there and then, but in the here and now, we will have water."
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Thursday, July 9, 2020
evening poem
the earth
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the soil
after his abuelo
plowed the ground
in the first days
of spring
the trees
were in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of bark
in the soft light
of the sunrise and sunset
the sea
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the water
as it turned with sand and shells
in the broken waves
along the shore
he loved the plowed earth,
walking through the cool dirt
with bare feet
he loved the bark of the trees,
climbing the smooth branches
in the heat of the day
he loved the sea,
floating naked
in the gently rocking waters
of the evening tide
she was the earth,
the trees,
the sea
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the soil
after his abuelo
plowed the ground
in the first days
of spring
the trees
were in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of bark
in the soft light
of the sunrise and sunset
the sea
was in her brown eyes
for they were the color
of the water
as it turned with sand and shells
in the broken waves
along the shore
he loved the plowed earth,
walking through the cool dirt
with bare feet
he loved the bark of the trees,
climbing the smooth branches
in the heat of the day
he loved the sea,
floating naked
in the gently rocking waters
of the evening tide
she was the earth,
the trees,
the sea
- Trevor Scott Barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
simple kindness
Simple kindness.
He remembered a time when he was a boy. He was sitting on a wooden stool in front of a broken window, looking out at the rain falling in great sheets from a cloudy sky. His mamí stood behind him with her arms around his chest. "I love you," she whispered in his ear. Then she walked away and returned to her work cleaning their shack and cooking their supper. In that moment, he knew that he was loved...and that he was able to love.
Did his mamí know that her simple kindness helped him love the world?
Simple kindness.
He remembered a time when he was a teenager. He was walking beside his papí in the late afternoon sun down a long row of beans. "Take my hand and come with me," said his papí. He took him to a tree and sat down with him under the shade of the giant branches. He took out a notebook, a notebook filled with words, beautiful words, powerful words, about people and about life, words he had written but never spoken, for he was a quiet person who spoke a little and worked a lot. "These words are for you, my son," he said. Then he walked away and returned to his work weeding the plants and nurturing the beans. In that moment, he knew that his own thoughts and words were important.
Did his papí know that his simple kindness helped him write stories?
Simple kindness.
He remembered a time when he was a young man. He was sitting at the foot of his bed. Gabby stood in front of him. She lowered her dress to the ground. He saw her naked for the first time. He looked at her sonrisa, her smile, and it was as if the sun had risen upon him. He looked at her brown skin, and it was as if the rich soil of the land was before him. He looked at her body and couldn’t breathe for a moment, and it was as if all of the beauty of the world had fallen on him. "Hold me close," she said. They held each other for a long time, and they didn’t speak but only held each other. In that moment, he knew companionship and compassion.
Did Gabby know that her simple kindness helped him find the meaning of life?
Simple kindness.
- Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Vespers
Fragments of Hilcias and Taki's Notebook
Taki put the palm of her hand on the trunk of the tree.
"When I was an agnaiyaaq, a little girl, my aaka held this hand and walked with me outside of Point Hope," she said, "and talked with me about the plants around us, the ones animals can and cannot eat, the ones people can and cannot eat, the ones animals and people can use for medicine.
This, Hilcias, is called the Balm of Gilead tree."
Hilcias looked closely at the buds on the lower branches of the tree and breathed deeply the sweet smell of the resin.
He whistled for the wonder of it all.
"Balm of Gilead resin can soothe a cough or keep a small wound or cut or scrape from getting infected.
Maybe it could help a mute boy from El Salvador talk, huh?
Just kidding.
You can rub the resin on your skin or gargle it with water and it helps relieve burns and sore throats.
It grows here even out of the hard, frozen land.
Look at the heart shaped leaves. They remind us that the heart is the place where we learn to share, cooperate, take responsibility, avoid conflict and respect others, all of the qualities the old ones try to pass along to us.
Aaka told me, she said, 'Taki, these are the values of The People. They keep hearts beating and life living in these frozen, Arctic lands.'"
Taki closed her eyes.
She put her ear on the smooth, light brown bark of the tree.
"I hear the tree," she whispered. "It is saying, 'Take only what you need from nature. Use what you have to help others. Always speak your own language.'"
Hilcias put the fingers of his hand on the petals of the flower.
"When I was a niño pequeño, a little boy, my abuelo held this hand and walked me outside of the migrant camps where we stayed," he whistled, "and taught me about the plants around us there, the ones you can eat, the ones you can use for medicine.
This is the izote flower.
It's the national flower of El Salvador."
Taki looked at the milky, bell shaped flowers clustered above the leaves of the plant.
She breathed in the sweet smell of the flowers.
"You can eat the flowers and they help relieve arthritis and headaches.
You can break the stems, plant them in the ground, and they will take root and grow new leaves and flowers."
Look at the sword shaped leaves," whistled Hilcias softly. "They remind us of our will to live. They remind us that the pen is a sword and that we can write stories to help us understand each other and be kind to each other."
He closed his eyes.
He put his ear to the evergreen leaves.
Their sharp spines pricked his skin.
"I hear the flowers," he whistled. "They're saying, 'Give ingenuity, beauty and wonder to world with the simplicity, plainness and ordinariness of your own language...of you.'"
Trevor Scott Barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
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