52 Blue

 52 Blue 

There is a whale in the northern Pacific Ocean named 52 Blue.

Scientists named him this because he sings at a frequency 52 MHz. 

Other whales like him sing at frequencies between 15 and 25 MHz. 

They cannot hear his song. 

He has been called the loneliest whale in the world. 

Normally, whales are not lonely. They are communal creatures. They live in family groups. 

They migrate from warm waters to cool waters to give birth and find food. 

They follow the same migratory route year after year. 

52 Blue is different.

He lives alone. 

He doesn’t follow a migratory route. 

He wanders the ocean.

“Not all who wander are lost,” says the old saying.

Neither are those who wonder.

The wonderers usually find.

52 Blue is a wandering, wondering whale. 

whale

song

lonely

where are you?

wandering, singing

singing unheard wandering songs

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, song on water

singing unheard wondering songs

wondering, singing

who are you?

gentle

song

whale

small story

 Small story from John’s Island - 

Poor little kid. He just sits over there every morning as the sun comes up. Never says a word. Just sits there watching the ocean and listening to the waves. 

One time I walked over to him. 'How you doin'?' I asked. 'What's your name?' He just looked at me. Didn't say a thing. 

I figured he didn't understand me. His granddaddy and momma are migrant workers picking peaches here until they move on down the coast. I thought maybe he only spoke Spanish. 

Finally, he whistled. It wasn't like a normal whistle with a shrill sound and two notes. Nope, it was an unusual whistle. It had all kinds of sounds in it, all kinds of notes. I've never heard anything like it in my life. It was like he was tryin' to say somethin' to me, but I had no idea what it was. Then he looked back at the ocean and was quiet again. 

I feel for him. I wonder what we could do to help him?"

Folks had talked that way about him since the day he was born. 

"Poor little baby," said the labor and delivery nurses at the hospital. "Born on a day like today. And his family has no papers. What could we do to help him?"

His family had just crossed into the United States. They had ridden the train, The Beast the migrants called it, all the way from the scorched earth of El Salvador's twelve year civil war to the Mexican - U.S. border. 

A coyote had brought them into the promised land and had taken them all the way to Miami. 

His mamí was pregnant with him and the time had come for her to deliver. The coyote stopped in front of St. Mary's church, made the sign of the cross, and put them out on the street with nothing but the tattered clothes on their backs and the battered shoes on their feet. As a matter of fact, his mamí’s shoes had fallen apart many miles ago so she was barefooted.

His abuelo lifted the iron knocker on the church's door and let it fall back to it's iron plate. He did this again and again until an old nun cracked open the door to the night.

The nun was a good woman, full of wisdom and compassion. She had worked in the city for many years. "I've seen it all," she said many times. Or she thought she had. For of all the people she had seen as an inner-city nun - convicts, addicts, broken people, oppressed people - she had never seen the beauty and suffering in the faces of Gustavo and Maria at the church door that night.

Their eyes were light with beauty, the beauty of being in a land without war, the beauty of bringing a new life into the world. Yet their bodies were heavy with suffering. They were filthy dirty after thousands of miles of migration over the long, treacherous road. Their shoulders sagged under the weight of years of homelessness, for their first home had been destroyed by bombs and their home since then had been tiny spaces of little kindnesses people had shown them along the way. 

They were quiet with the silence of the fear of the unknown. 

The nun was especially struck by the sight of Maria. She was sitting on the bottom step of the church, her bare feet pressed flat against the concrete sidewalk, her arms wrapped around her swollen belly, and her face anguished in the pains of labor.

"Vamanos á la carro," said the nun. "Let’s go!”

fragments of Trevor’s notebook

 Life can be full of wonder for caterpillars. 

It can also be full of danger.

My little brother Carver taught me all about caterpillars. 

Late one spring afternoon, we were sitting together under the oak tree in our back yard, a tree we called "Ol' Giant" because it was a humongous tree with two limbs that looked like a giant's arms branching out of a knobby trunk that looked like a giant's knee. 

It was one of the many places that became a laboratory or a classroom that Carver used for researching and teaching.

There were caterpillars everywhere, inching their way over and around "Ol' Giant" and us.

“Look at all these cat'pillers, Carver. There’s no end to 'em.”

“It might look like there’s no end to 'em but they have to be careful 'cause they have pred'tors that are out to hurt 'em an' ev'n kill 'em. 

See that bird settin' on "Ol Giants" arm? 

It's ready to swoop down on one o' these little ones and use it for it’s ev'nin' meal. 

Hear those wasps a buzzin' round the nest at the porch door? 

They’d like to use one o' these little ones for food, too. 

When poppa comes in from the field, his mud caked boots might accidentally step on one of these little ones and crush the life outta it. 

So there’s many things that could put a end to 'em.

But there’s some ways these little ones can protect themselves. 

These ways are amazin', wonderful ways nature gave ‘em to help ‘em. 

Look at this little one. What’s the first thing you notice 'bout it?”

“It’s got bright colors all around it.”

“This little one is a Monarch. Those bright colors tell that bird and those wasps that it’s been eatin' pois'nous plants an' so is pois'nous itself.

Nature makes it tough on the inside so it can be safe on de outside.

How 'bout this one? What you notice 'bout it?”

“Hey, that’s cat'pillar larva. At first I thought it was bird droppins'.”

“These little ones’ll be Tiger Swallowtails. 

Nature he'ps them camouflage themselves so they can stay safe.

What 'bout this one?”

“It has two big circles that look like eyes.”

“Those are called eyespots an' make this little one look bigger an' scarier than it really is. 

Nature he'pd it look like a snake so that bird an' that wasp will leave it alone.

Yep, life is full of danger.

But it’s full of wonder, too.

holy listening

If I’m a holy anything, I’m a holy listener.

My ears are the most important part of me.

Listening is sacred to me.

When I hear the word ‘immigrant’ I close my eyes and see the face of one of my students, who I wrote about here -

 https://www.scjustice.org/i-send-tomas-to-you/

I look through old Life Magazines and see photographs of people putting on tattered coats, holey shoes, and red scarves; picking up battered suitcases that are taped around the sides to keep in their meager, precious possessions; and leaving the lives they know and love in hope to make a better life free from violence, disease and extreme poverty. 

In the life of my student and his family, in the faces of the people in the pictures, I see human beings. 

I was an immigrant once, you know.

 

I was welcomed into the country of Mali in west Africa, and I was cared for and loved by my friends there. 

I have made a promise to care for and love immigrants around me as my neighbors in Mali cared for and loved me.

I wrote this poem to help us see the human face of immigration, feel the hearts of immigrants, and know ourselves in the lives of the immigrants around us.

Go now in the name of the immigrant, the human being, the holy stranger. 

Go now to make neighbors out of strangers. 

Go now to make friends out of enemies.

Go now with an immigrant heart.

http://www.musepiepress.com/fibreview/issue27/trevor_scott_barton1.html 

Curves

 minimalism

The curves of her body reminded him of the gently rolling hills below the mountains where he lived as a boy. 

Her brown eyes were the deep soil of the people's farms.

She was beautiful like the land, like the yellow flowers he found as he roamed the countryside barefooted, like the green trees that sparkled after a heavy rain.

They listened to the sound of the rain on the window of the hotel in the old part of the city. 

They made love to the rolling thunder and flashing lightning of the morning storm beside the tree.

- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

liBErate

 be

the tear 

on the hungry child's cheek,

the callous

on the weathered farmer's hand,

the wrinkle

around the worried mamí's eye,

the blister 

on the tired campesino's foot.

find beauty

in the plain

find genius

in the simple

find wonder

in the ordinary

find courage

in the human

be with,

you will be

seek,

you will find

become 

a 

human 

question 

mark

accompany

life

liBErate

- trevor scott barton, poems for a brown-eyed girl, 2020

St. Gabriel the Writer

 Fragments from my notebook

Hilcias is his name.

He is a genius.

No one knows.

Those are the best kinds of geniuses, for they are humble.

The world needs more humble geniuses.

Like most geniuses, he sees the world with curiously. 

This is how I learned of him.

He was curious about whales. 

"There's a boy who knows a lot about whales," came word over water. 

And he did. 

He drew a beautiful picture of a bowhead whale and wrote beneath it - "A bowhead whale's blubber is over two feet thick so it can live in the Arctic cold. The bowhead can create it's own breathing hole by breaking through ice up to twelve inches thick." 

He drew a blue whale and wrote - “A blue whale's heart is bigger than a Volkswagon Beetle, but it's ears are smaller than the point of a pencil." 

He drew a sperm whale and wrote - "For many years, oil from a sperm whale's head was used to create light for people. In fact, people measure the strength of light in lumens, which is the light of one sperm whale oil candle." 

He is a whale genius.

He is ten years old.

He doesn’t speak.

He hasn't spoken a single word in his whole life.

When he was two years old, his mamí talked with him in the language of poetry as she walked with him tied to her back down the long rows of peaches and tomatoes under the South Carolina sun. 

She reached up to the trees, took a peach in her hands, and rubbed the fuzzy skin against his soft cheek.

She whispered,

Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres

porque de las praderas planetarias

otra estrella no tengo. Tú repites

la multiplicación del universo.

I love the handful of earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.

She waited for him to talk back to her in toddling talk, to say words like “mamí” and “amo” and “tú”.

But he didn't. 

He didn't say anything at all. 

He only looked at her with his wide, unblinking, brown eyes, eyes the color of the deep parts of the earth.

He jutted out his little, bottom lip as if to say, "I’m sorry, mamí, but I can’t find the words to talk about the beauty, genius, wonder and courage I see and feel around me.”

People ask him, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "How are you?" and he answers them with whistles instead of with words. 

People ask his abuelo, "What's wrong with him?" 

The old man simply shrugs and sighs the sigh of someone who carries heavy loads on his back and in his heart. 

"Dios sabe,”’he answers. “God knows." 

Well, I know, too. 

I am St. Gabriel the writer, patron saint of ten-year-old kids searching for their voices.

Here is his story.

- TSB, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020