Darkened
country road
Littered
with double-wide islands
Prefab
havens of solitude and la familia
The field workers at rest
Hard, heavy and
honest
The
latest Telanovella re-run singing
Through the scent soaked air
Saturated
with lard smoke and cilantro
And the deep heat of peppers
This
short dirt road is tied up
In
blood connections
Of varying strengths
All
strong enough
To carry one cousin after another
From
impoverished drug lord border towns
To a new Southern home
Where
all the landscapers are rednecks
All the highwaymen are blacks
But
even here neither one of them will work the fields
It’s
a good life
A thousand miles from La Migra
And their ways of
fear
There
is peace here on a desolate road
Where
a makeshift dance hall takes up residence
In
the cleared out space
Where the tractor stayed
In the wet season
But
in spring there is music and flirting
A
shining beacon where joy abounds
Oblivious
to the passing few
That peer in to the light
As
a dozen teenagers
Learn the history of dance
From the aging pied
piper
He
calls to them for the sake of the dance
And for the preservation of La Raza
And
for matters of love
And things that can only be told
When
the hand of the boy
Rests in the small of the back
Of
the girls whose hand he has taken in this journey
A
waltz on Friday and the jitterbug Wednesday and Thursday
And mama just one more dance
No comments:
Post a Comment