One reaches back to draw those memories forward. You catch the hand of the child and when you pull, he ages or she ages, the seasons spin yellow green brown white and those colors light the face as bulbs on a carnival ride, light the smile as well as the fallen eyes, light their delight and their terror, the waves of time washing from toes to ankles, from knees to thigh, until fully a woman or a man they stride into the ocean, confident in their ability to swim, til the tide takes them away.
That’s what it is like to open a poem from years ago: vertiginous. Since poetry is given birth from the whole body (it is), rereading words from the past is to run your hands over heirloom fabric, and the sparks that fly from nerve ending to neuron floodlight these endpoints of history, with everything that came between, everything that you were, and are.
| VILLA VERDAD | |
| The lovers have thrown wide the windows and pushed their bright faces and linen out upon the balcony which stands above the street |
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| oh Guará, what a happy race | |
| and the sun-tanned vendors with their ripe carts the hushing grandmothers fitting children with bows and fleet animals tagging among the trees |
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| oh Guará, such a happy race | |
| the meat is on the grill, Guará, and onions small as your blonde thumbnail and sweet tomatoes, the jewels of summer |
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| Guará, we are a happy race | |
| so many cousins and friends, such a filled place words planted on slight green stems, to a garden of gentle flowers, their graceful colors |
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| Guará, my happy race | |
| yesterday the lovers were joined for life into their bouquet the petals of brilliant hopes you and I, you and I, you and I! |
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| ah, Guará, so it is a happy race | |
| Across the avenue another church and travel in a different direction the dark-dressed family burying their own |
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| no, Guará, my sorry race | |
| a bullet from heaven, from the war’s remains a teardrop of hail through the curtain-lace melted into a single mortal star |
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| no, Guará, such a sad race | |
| which bloomed, then faded — a nameless hand attached as it was to distance and foreign winds placed its cold palm upon the forehead |
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| Guará, Guará, this aching race | |
| slid fingers toward the earth, closing those eyes what value was this life, Guará? the bullet forged from melted coins |
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| ah, Guará, my sorry race | |
| The lovers, ashamed of nothing, slowly kiss as couples in the street separately pass oh that little room cannot contain itself |
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| Guará, do you see this happy race? | |
| the sweat of their simple labor runs together in a vital drop of heat they don’t know yet, but they have sparked a life |
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July, 1989
“Morning Street” by tehub @ DeviantArt
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