Grandmother’s feuille-morte quilt
brown, crimson, tan, amber, purple
beckons me barefoot
but if I dared
my feet would sink in cold slippery leaves
soggy black dirt and gnarled twigs.
Continue Reading »Posted in Autumn, Death/Loss/Grief, Interiority, Natural World | Leave a Comment »
Toucans landed on the field behind your house
improbable, the things we think are beautiful
Why the hummingbird, iridescent and almost impossible to track as it zooms and flits and chitters through the tree
and not the giant black bus of the bee whose heft is long and wide, seeming to defy gravity, land on the curved edge of the hibiscus flower and pull itself up into its pollen-filled Eden?
The wild horse and not its domestic burro cousin?
Births and fat-cheeked babies and not the bones under translucent skin of the fully ripened elder?
Continue Reading »Posted in Birds, Guanajuato, Hummingbirds, Memory, México, Music/Song | 2 Comments »
The land loves us back. She loves us with beans and tomatoes, with roasting ears and blackberries and birdsongs.
-Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
It is not enough to know I loved the land
the cerros – too big to be hills, too small to be mountains –
rolling, sloped and curved like crouching frogs
lacking snow-capped peaks to draw the eye upward
white painted crosses denoting a prior pilgrim’s ascent
the exhilaration of reaching the very last step of the climb
the disappointment that the heavens could come no closer.
Continue Reading »Posted in Cerros, Guanajuato, Leaving, Love, México | Tagged Cerros, Guanajuato, love | 2 Comments »
En otro tiempo
en otro desierto
un viento eterno sopló una bandada de pájaros del mar al desierto del Sinaí
a un pueblo destinado a vagar por cuarenta años sin patria
bastante tiempo para que todos los que han nacido en esclavitud muriesen
para que esos que nacieron en el yermo, sin hogar,
supieran la libertad
al entrar en la tierra prometida.
Continue Reading »Posted in Bible Story, Birds, Isolation/Belonging, México | 2 Comments »