Guatemalan Rain
10 Jan 2012 Leave a comment
I am shaping my mouth
around voices that journeyed
over oceans and mountains,
I am crossing vowels as if they are
rivers of water language,
picking up sounds as subtle as
pushed sand
beneath the oar of my tongue.
I am aware of time,
how it spreads itself thin across
the belly of my travels,
leaving only stretch marks
for untranslatable pauses
that fall
into the silent smiles
of the old woman smiling back at me
she turtles herself under a plastic sheet
in the rain,
the barefoot path juggles her
like hopscotch over warm puddles.
In her brown skin there are
landscapes
of stories, bordered by thick ropes of
grey hair.
Muchas lluvia,
she says, lluvia,
singing each syllable as if
every tropical drop were a memory of relief,
her calloused hands open like hibiscus blooms,
banana leaves take hold
of her aroma
she moves through the courtyard
as if the trees were her shelter
and she were a field
drinking
in green
The faded weaves that wrap her
take her now back into the mountains,
the night tucking her away
and I am left beneath the courtyard trees,
my flowering hands
falling.
Inspirational Village 