journeys of a restless mind

The Three Kinds of Rock

You search the riverbank for stones
smooth and flat, round
in your palm
to toss across the surface
calling, mom look
it skipped three times.

Stone in my pocket, stone
in my hand, the solid weight
just as temporary
as the water’s splash.

I rub my fingers
in talismanic circles
across the surface
certain of my power
to wear a groove.

Igneous, sedimentary
flowing fire or tiny bits pressed
hard beneath the layers
that came before.

A stone to swallow, a stone
to chew, crumbling shards
between my teeth
scraping across the surface
polishing everything clean.

A stone transformed
a bird flying
from a boy’s fingertips
lightly touching
the surface of the river
three times
before sinking down
through the dark water
metamorphic.

Popocatepetl

Popocatepetl is breathing fire
sending ash over the broken back of the city
and a rumbling underneath that nobody notices.
The people know a thing or two about disasters,
natural or otherwise.

The square is always full of tarps and banners,
smoke rising from old cookstoves,
the smell of unwashed bodies and tortillas.
Teachers and truck drivers have come
from homes far away to camp here
in the shadow of Parliament on the hard stones.

!El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!
they shout over and over as they march.
The people! United! Will never be defeated!
They set up camp that spills out over the square
like the contents of a drawer overturned.
Defiant and tired, they lay their heads down
on the cobbles and listen for rumblings.

It’s only smoke and ash, there is no molten river
coursing down the mountain to purify
everything in its path. The tarps gather dust
and soot, tourists and businessmen walk by
without a glance. Nothing changes
until the rains come and wash a trail
on their faces like tears and turn the ash to mud.

Sestina Moreliana

The chicle boy is dirty and small
and knows to smile wide
and tilt his head to the side
just so, like the stray dogs that beg
for scraps beneath your feet as you sit
quietly drinking coffee at the portales.

The cracked stones of the portales
that arch above you are as wrinkled as the small
women who usually sit
still as statues on the wide
pavement, peeking from blue rebozos, begging
for coins, which you slide sideways

into their open palms. It’s hot outside;
it’s hotter at home. At least the portales
offer cool agua de sandia and the laughter of begging
men who whistle for Cata the waitress to bring small
cups of cafe  that they encircle with their wide
hands. Tipping back their hats, they sit

contentedly and ignore the chicle boy who sits
on the curb picking at a scab on the side
of his leg, throwing rocks into the wide
empty gutter. Does he sleep in the portales
in a corner at night under a small
dirty blanket? “I am not begging,”

he says, “like she is begging.”
And he points to the old woman sitting
in that worn out spot in the corner, small
and quiet. “I do business,” he says, close by your side.
So you buy some gum. You know at the portales
that’s how things are done. Along the wide

busy avenidas under the scalloped wide
arches, everyone is begging
for something. Just because you come to the portales
with your pockets full of pesos and can sit
drinking coffee all day at tables side-by-side,
doesn’t mean your needs have grown small.

Nothing about you is small,
not the begging for love nor the wide hollows inside
like portals you cannot cross, but start through only to stop and sit.