for José
Today is different.
When I pull around the corner
to approach Sonora's school,
I can't help but notice
the trees lined along the road.
They have burst into bloom,
all of them,
as if a curtain of rain had unveiled
an orchestra of trumpets.
I park beneath their branches,
as I do each morning.
Blasts of yellow clusters
blare against the blue
as if God himself were uncovering his face.
They will not last the month, I think.
Sonora slows down
and traces each bell shaped flower
falling to the ground.
She reaches down for one
and deliberately mouths each syllable
Ta-be-bu-ia
gleaming with anticipation.
I write because I cannot remember at all.
That is the last line of the first poem,
the first poem I ever wrote,
the first letter I never sent.
That was 15 years ago.
Tía has come to visit.
We have finally met.
Her hair is white yet silken
held away from her brow
by two tiny butterfly pins.
I'm not sure what I expected.
A harsher look, an angrier stare perhaps.
Her eyes, crystalline blue,
are deep and deceiving,
like the cool calm lake
I swam in pregnant
on those hot hazy months of summer.
She likes to tell stories,
forty years of untold stories,
of endless days caring for our ailing grandmother,
of cans of cheap paint and daily lines at the bakery,
of buckets of water hauled from the street below
and of how they forbid her to speak,
nor to think about the children,
the children
she used to prime in her schoolroom.
Tía has returned to the island.
I can hardly recall
the lilt in her voice.
I never expected I would want
to seal my heart.
Index
for Belkis and Heberto
After 25 years of marriage,
to the same husband,
I thought I could offer
a recipe for love.
Tío has come to visit from Havana.
He tells me of his 43 year marriage
to the woman he met at a guest house,
after he was engaged to another,
the woman with whom he toasted
forty anniversaries
of hardships and betrayals,
the woman with whom he has met God.
We walk along the gravel path
leading to the jettys
and I listen.