Well, that was an interesting evening. When I arrived I found chairs set up and some people playing around with a slide projector. I introduced myself and that began what I hope will be a long and interesting relationship. Larry, a retired teacher and part time instructor at the UOG is studying ancient Chamorro chants and song. The tiny woman working with him on the projector is one of the other professors but I didn't catch her name. She is Japanese and my ear isn't trained to catch the syllables yet. However, she was the featured poet and was preparing an illustrated recitation of her Tanka poetry. Larry introduced me to Leslie, one of his former students and the young woman who was the driving force behind the Sotta. By the way, I don't have a working definition of Sotta yet but I believe it's a Chamorro word.

Anyway, Larry, in his spare time is working on a traditional Polynesian canoe that he and a group of his friends and a traditional Chamorro navigator want to sail to the other islands in the chain. They made one voyage, from Palau, but the canoe was badly damaged in the last typhoon and they are trying to get it repaired. I've been invited to join them on Saturday as they work on it.

As we got closer to the kick off more and more people showed up. They were mostly younger people but there were a smattering of those who were closer to my age. Once things got rolling and performer followed performer I realized I was involved in a poetry open mike. The performers ranged from a little girl preparing for first grade to a woman who commented on how menopause was affecting her memory. The little girl recited a Chamorro chant which the MC translated after she finished. What followed included a Korean-American boy who read his school essay on finding peace between North and South Korea, his sisters who performed a series of little skits THEY thought were hilarious, a young man, definitely Chamorro, who read his angry poem on the loss of his cultural background, and the usual run of kids for whom life has turned out to be more complex than they liked. One of the first presenters stepped up to the mike dressed in a bright red dress and long brown hair draped over her shoulders. She was hot. If I was 30 years younger I'd have been tracing after her myself. She recited a poem about meeting a man. She started with a soft breathy voice that she worked up to the excitement of sex and then ended with the words, "Hey! You gotta pay!" Very funny.

When I set out for the event the sky was cloudy. When I stopped for supper it rained a little but that's not unusual. After I got there it started to rain with a little more serious intent. The venue was an open area in the middle of a small covered outdoor shopping mall. The performance area was at the intersection of two "halls" of shops. High overhead was an arched roof. As the rain increased we found that the roof not only leaked but that the wind blew the rain into where we were sitting. That delayed the beginning and then later on it interrupted the proceedings. So there we were, sitting in wet chairs and getting dripped on. But the people hung on. I met more interesting people including a DJ from the local NPR station who invited me to play on the station and a former writer for the Pacific Daily News, the local paper.

When my turn came along I felt a little out of place. This was, after all, a poetry open mike though it had been advertised as being open to any performers at all. Still, I felt like a cat in a dog kennel. But inspiration had struck moments before and I had written this:

Poets in the rain,
Speaking of life and love,
With lightning in their words,
And thunder in their hearts,
These are the poets with wet butts.

That was greeted with enthusiasm so I went on to do Henery The 8th and Mary Mac. My performance was well received. I had taken my guitar but didn't want to get it out of the case in those conditions.

I stuck around for a while longer to hear several more poets and then around 9:30 I bugged out. It was a great evening. Unfortunately there is no next one to look forward to.