A response to A Woman

“A woman”…I have a memory I cherish of a waterfall in Jamaica. It’s not a waterfall someone busses you in to look at, it’s one that zig zags flat down the mountain, enough so that you can walk the whole way through the water. It takes a few hours.

My cousin and my best friend and I began our decent at the top of this mountain in Negril…a wild sanctuary of green lush grass and welcoming trees. In the middle lies a wooden makeshift bar with a whole lotta rum at the ready. Mostly I recall the sound of perpetual thunder… which was actually the forever roaring water flowing down the mountain right close. The contrast of that rumble of rapids with the moneyless serenity of wild green vegetation at the summit was spiritual I tell you!

At the top is where we met our guide, a dreadlocked soulful Rasta named…I can’t remember his damn name but he was soulful. On the way down the falls, another random Rasta pops out to offer some ganja which you smoke thank you, and thus the decent becomes uplifting…the glare of the river-froth dances with darting sun rays that hover and bounce off edges of rocks on all sides. Thousands of tons of water gush down and rage alive in your ear. Shared knowing smiles from your loved ones and new ones – the Rasta – steal the show. To boot we’re talking cold crisp invigorating rapids lapping at your hips, up your bare skin…egging you on and holding you down. I honestly don’t have any memories of us reaching the bottom of this mountain.

“A woman,” I tell you my story to get to that line – your passion eggs you on and holds you down. That journey for us down that waterfall was of course not about getting to the bottom. The only moments I remember my heart racing in those rapids were with shared stares from afar…connections amidst the chaos.

I hear your story and I sense you and the object of your affection pushing on, the way we all must. But I also feel your heat as you report to us the gushing water around your hips and the hot rays wetting your eyes.

So please don’t fret about where your going. In time you will only recall the rapids. Of course, I do understand you have to get to the bottom of the mountain before nightfall…which looms. Yet it is not dark yet.