A deep bow and two apples

Photo 2023 by Alice Walker

The man who appears tiny as he repairs a palapa in my garden seems like a magician to me. I wish I had words in his language to tell him how impressed I am – instead I offer a deep bow, and two apples.

Yesterday a friend took me to look at a dusty, far from “civilization” village of perhaps thirty residents. As I gazed, he said: this is the village of the palapa makers.

Nothing was shipshape. In the heat and dust, nothing stirred. And yet, here is where genius lived. Magicians of stripped wooden poles and leaves of palms, sun browned men make extraordinary, leak proof, creations out of poles, palmas, and fibrous rope.

Though palapas often sit atop structures two stories high, nowhere did I see a ladder!

Sometimes I feel this world is too much for me. That I will just, very quietly, keel over from admiration, astonishment, and awe. ~aw