Day # 258: A Poem for Tuesday

#258

I was on a bus to Mexico City from Veracruz

driving north from the Gulf, Spanish at record

breaking speeds, pouring around corners on

a mountain pass with the radio blaring in

English.  "Cecelia, you're breaking my heart,"

     over and over again.

To keep my mind from thinking the worst,

thinking about rolling off a mountain side

with 50 men, women and children

I couldn't understand, I imagined lying 

with you in a bedroom, making love,

I got up to wash my face.

It was so predicable, so possible

much more than dying in these mountains

of Southern Mexico, short trees, arid, people on the sides

of roads, just appeared like ghosts along the way

wooden boxes for suitcases and cowboy hats.

How come I remember people in other countries

all dressed in sienna tones?  Browns with

black leather belts or big skirts and

beautiful big eyed children with dirty faces?

Is my memory so indoctrinated that it removes

almost all of the color out of a scene?

What I remember from Mexico City are

owls sitting on poles along the city street,

watching me walk by singing my songs.

Owls with unreal head motions following

the gringos as they stared in disbelief 

at the poverty they'd never seen, at the

children's faces asking, curious, not knowing

the words to the silly American

song of common adultery. 

9/15/2010

September heat is fast and furious and makes all the bees go crazy.  Shorter days, days as long as April days, but cooling off instead of heating up.  This year I am extremely aware that the summer has ended and the fall is speeding up.  I am not going back to work, instead I am trying to design a schedule that helps me finish this book by January.  I have completely withdrawn from the normal cycles of the work a day world and sitting and listening to music on the sidewalk is valued as much as anything else I could be doing.  And the 14 year old kid inside of me sings along with Let It Be and is processed as important and as willingly accepted as trying to take in what bosses at meetings are trying to say to my evermore closing brain.

My brain was closing to the value of my work and my heart was shutting down, and now three years later, I feel wide open again, more integrated and complete.  September warmth stimulates the old routines, time to go back to the school year calendar, but I am not giving into the urge, I know whats best now.  I will stay here.