"La Lechuza" and Other Poems

La Lechuza

When my grandmother was a child
there were still outbreaks of plague and cholera
on the island of Cuba. She watched the black carriage
pulled by black horses wearing black tassels.
The carriage of death was called la lechuza, the pygmy owl,
with its silent wings of night.

Some of the people who died were said to have traveled to heaven and back
returning from the graveyard alive, with stories to tell about angels, harps
and golden wings of light.

Later, when no one was looking, wild pygmy owls from the rain forest
hunted in the midnight-blue air above empty graves, capturing luna moths named for the moon
swallowing the pale wings in flight.

---

tanka written while reading a war memoir:

a survivor
shares his war story
in second person
erasing any distinction
between his memories and mine

---

Dancing On Stilts

The giants of Old Havana
wear tree limbs
instead of shoes.

They dance along the cobblestones
swaying men and women in ruffled clothing
moving like the branches of a forest in wind.

Carnival nights and days
are not the only times worthy of courage.
Ordinary hours require agility and balance.
Ordinary dancers on stilts see life far below
a cloud's-eye view of the smiles they have created
by causing small children
to look up and believe
in the height
of blue sky.

---

Vanishing

On the eve of my grandmother's funeral
astronomers spoke of a planet
so close to its parent sun
that molecule by molecule
the gaseous atmosphere
evaporated
followed by the core
a sphere of heated vapors
now traveling in space
all the particles invisible
and equidistant
an exquisite balance
of natural history
and faith.

---

The Year Of Magical Thinking

My mother insisted that I ran like a horse or Pegasus, head forward,
neck stretching into the future, a perilous leap, and of course she was right,
I did lose my balance, I broke my front teeth.

Yet somehow I was right too, instinctively certain that as an eight-year-old human child
I was cantering along the cliff-steep brink of abrupt transformations, the possibilities
unknown: woman, herd, wild-winged beast. One tumbling fall would be enough to send
marrow-filled bones plummeting down onto jagged, indifferent stone,
or hollow-stemmed feathers up
into sky.

---

The Kitchens Of Cuba

Open-air in the old town, enclosed in the modern
always a single glass pitcher of water
boiled and filtered through gravel, sand, charcoal and dreams

white rice and black beans at the start of each month
rum, coffee and sugar, tangible, fragrant

real food
hoarded rations

by mid-month a banquet of dreams on the table
the pitcher of water, clear glass, sweet illusion
transparency, crystalline, nourishing daydream

imaginary food
real hunger

hoarded visions
of the inevitable passing
of time.