Our Man in Europe/now Belize/Dave Delacroix: "Belize morning/I ain't going nowhere."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Belize morning/I aint going nowhere."

...THE MORNINGS SWIFT FLIGHT of swallows (no carry-ons) zoom effortlessly across my Corozal bay horizon. Three "butter birds" (yellow-breasted "Avion" thingies) stalk/stake-out my Cats food tray. And a high wind to Jamaica blusters, comes & goes exposing a patch of blue. (Gotta be Happy-Hour someplace?)

YUP! The dawn CHORUS has begun. That Cuckoo/Dove persists with its "telephone engaged" hour long repetition song & a MURDER of CROWS, now exhausted with, well, "Crowing", fighting over the pine trees-branches-seating/sleeping arrangements now finally resolve to buzz off & take to the skies.

A lone Pelican, quite apt here at our Chateaux-Pelican Guest Villa plops onto the roof of our poolside cabana, regurgitates the reward of its 'dawn patrol", possibly to de-bone "sans" cutlery or serviette? Whilst two blackbirds (decaffeinated Crows) sucking down chlorine-tainted swim-pool water, straighten up, then patrol the adjacent poolside lawn in search of bugs on seemingly staggering, drunken legs?

Up at natures DEFCOM-4 level (the old, tall pine trees a-back the Villa) the stealth IGUANAS (green Party as opposed to the orange variety/staunch Republicans) slither down the pine tree trunks, stand & stare at each other, flex their backbone needles-spiked-armor in case, perchance an EAGLE, looking for an easy kill swoops by? "Allors!" (French, for GADZOOKS!!!); out back, RALPH, our semi-resident transgender Crocodile in the mangroves/canal/bayou wiggles his armored tail, floats on the ebb tide out to Corozal bay, a reptiles convenience store. S-where his/her munchies are!

And all the while, tropic regulation, Zillionaire or BUM, Tee-shirt & shorts, flipflops optional in FEBRUARY "avec" Bloody Mary & Smokes, a Rock & Roll breakfast! "Far from the madding crowd!": U took the words right out of my mouth! -I aint going Nowhere. Besides? With my "Feng-Sui" at stake not to mention sabotaging my contribution to my morning's ritual philosophical debate on the significance of "Dialectic Materialism" in 2026 with TWO Fur-Balls, Soldier & Bela! (CATS ANONYMOUS! - the 12 steps of Purring!)

It goes something like this:

 "Meow."

"Meow?"

"MEOW!?"

"Hmm/Purr/ Meow!"

"MEOWW?

""Me-Me-OWWW!!!"

"OK. Me, er, OWWW!"

"ZIPPO! -Meow..."

"U know what I'm saying?"

...All on a Corozal-Belize tropic morning. And U got it. I aint going nowhere!

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.

Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Tambourine Girl."

 Our Man in Europe, now Belize, Dave Delacroix: "Tambourine Girl."

...NO SHOES, FRAYED DRESS, flaxen hair-locks, long askew, a tambourine beating an unlikely tempo, no percussive back-up, nose upward, proudly appointed, yet a stark despair in her dark eyes that SCREAMS triumph wrapped in an Anaconda-snakes squeeze of poverty...

...but yes, there IS defiance in her eyes... at the coins U fling at her... as U walk on by.

No shoes, HUNGER, a "Gitano/Gypsy" outcast? Might as well be your long-lost daughter trying to make her OWN way to survive...solo with a tambourine... What Gods or Spirts can save her need? An Oracle? A SYBIL? One day perhaps her Prince will come...?

Who HERALDS!!!

...Did U unknowingly pass her by, or recognized, SHRINK! A family likeness? Or grudgingly remember: "Did He or made the Lamb make thee?" (Tambourine-Rattlesnake SHRILL!) The kernel of your Soul suddenly crushed under foot, your past altruism apparently worthless as U walk on by?

...Tambourine Girl: Now wearing shoes, dumpster-reclaimed, "flip-flops", past their "sell date" but toes knit together with dirt. BEHOLD! A "raggedly-Anne" awash into Societies seven seas! Somebodies KID on your OWN Cities streets!

... How does she eat? Where does she sleep? With whom MUST she sleep!? In an Anaconda snakes deadly grip. Lamia on Lamia. But for this moment...Tambourine SHRILL!!! An Angel. MUSIC! The girl with the Tambourine.

c.2026. Dave Delacroix.