Carolyn Chilton Casas lives on the central coast of California, the perfect landscape for a love of hiking and playing beach volleyball. She is a Reiki master and teacher, and often explores ways of healing in her articles written for magazines in multiple countries. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies including The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal. More of Carolyn’s work can be found on Facebook or Instagram, in her poetry collection Our Shared Breath, and in the forthcoming book Under the Same Sky.
Mom, you’ve trained your whole life
for this, my grown son encourages
as I struggle down a steep incline
to a small cove on an island
off the coast of Spain,
feet sweating in sandals,
tiny pebbles sliding under my soles,
on a scorching,
humid August afternoon.
Much worth the effort, though—
small rocky bay, narrow
beach covered in egg-sized stones,
a clear, turquoise sea to swim in,
though we have no inkling
how we’ll be able trek back up
the exacting slope in this heat.
Later, I’ll wonder exactly what he meant
by his comment. The traveling
I’ve done to insanely hot places?
My longstanding love of hiking
hills and ridges? Or maybe
he was referring to his witnessing
over the years of when I stubbornly
set my mind to something,
I never give in.
Poetry in this post: © Carolyn Chilton Casas
Published with the permission of Carolyn Chilton Casas