The Old Mule

A Start

The heat
has come again
and our tent
is an oven,
unholy perched
hillside
above chattering dogs
and axe thud
on hickory.

We flow
towards one another,
underwater,
without words.

This is our first hike
and the blueberries
are not quite formed.
But the
wild azaleas
burn open
just like we were told.

This thicket
holds us
quiet as nest birds
while summer rains pass.

April slips
off
her skivvies,
and breathless
I follow
suit.

A Strange Thought

1) Off to Mexico
2) Veracruz
3) Inland from the Gulf
4) Middle of nowhere
5) No phone
6) No stores
7) Last time I ate a cow head
8) Tongue and all
9) Insufferable heat
10) Sugar cane / mango farms
11) There is talk of a fishing river
12) and some mules.
13) I am supposed
14) to look for the second dirt turn
15) after a field with the
16) abandoned shed
17) and get off by the tulipan tree
18) start heading “towards town”
19) and a man in a big straw hat
20) will meet me with directions.
21) Juan knows that I like
22) everything planned just so,
23) maybe this is his way
24) of letting me know
25) that Mexico is his country,
26) not mine.
27) In seventy-two hours I depart
28) Arrive at midnight
29)  Sailor-port town -
30)  the same bank that welcomed the
31)  first water-logged bow
32)  of a deep cut boat from Spain.

Salinas / Puerta Cruz - II...and two poems

Oldie Joaquin was a barrel-chested Zapotec with a penchant for small arms and smile full of gold. You could tell the Jungle had worn hard on him by the way he swatted flies and bounced his knee. Oldie reined the Sierra Norte like Montezuma, and all the citizens knew his machete was not for show.

He was a country boy who had grown used to the city, and coming back here was getting harder every time. But this was his office – an outdoor affair, this patch of farm tract coffee land and burnt over forest. Planes could roll up from the pacific fog and light down like storks at twelve thousand feet.

On the mountain, folks were born and sent off. Those who lingered worked for Oldie. Commerce was his trade. 

He was crisp dressed in gentleman attire and sat feet back beneath a rain shed. Cards had been laid out, and a half dozen coco palms were scalped for drinking. Around his cabins, branches hung with unripe fruit. Rotting mangoes stuck to my shoes. Oldie knew we were going to call on him – he had eyes in every city south of Juarez. He gave a shiny toothed grin and motioned for us to sit around.

I got nervous and launched in to business, but was side-shuffled by a quick winded cattle hand accustomed to the impatience of gringos. A fish head broth appeared and my insides recoiled. I sipped lightly, stewing over our stashed truck full of dope.

After dinner, Oldie leaned back and smelt the breeze. He knew what was coming. We could deliver twenty kilos of Bogotá-stamped black tar to his point man at La Merced, Mexico City. In exchange, we wanted a tender parcel of land twenty miles south of Huatulco and a flight back to Georgia. This seemed like good business to me, a solid-fair shake. Oldie’s eyes were placid. I shifted in my chair.

He leaned in close, fruit breath and metal…“amigos, I only do business with cowboys. It seems that you have forgotten your pistols.” I thought he was digging in to drive us down, but his yellow teeth rattled with laughter. This was witchcraft, I thought, a turn down a real sordid path. He knew we lacked a good market and were itching to beat it North. Oldie settled in with the dusk and promised a reply by morning.

I was queasy with stress and my lips were all chapped. Over and over I reasoned…never foot-race a man who can win by thinking.

We headed downriver and found the truck. I promised x.y. that we would sleep the night in the next coast town, but as soon as she drifted off I steered our shark up the Pan American highway.

By dawn, I thought, we could make the east edge of Mexico City.

To be continued...

--

for those who have not heard...the best last lines in poetry.

Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight. © Copper Canyon Press

Mother Night

When you wake at three AM you don't think
of your age or sex and rarely your name
or the plot of your life which has never
broken itself down into logical pieces.
At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension
wherein the galaxies make more sense
than your job or the government. Jesus at the well
with Mary Magdalene is much more vivid
than your car. You can clearly see the bear
climb to heaven on a golden rope in the children's
story no one ever wrote. Your childhood horse
named June still stomps the ground for an apple.
What is morning and what if it doesn't arrive?
One morning Mother dropped an egg and asked
me if God was the same species as we are?
Smear of light at five AM. Sound of Webber's
sheep flock and sandhill cranes across the road,
burble of irrigation ditch beneath my window.
She said, "Only lunatics save newspapers
and magazines," fried me two eggs, then said,
"If you want to understand mortality look at birds."
Blue moon, two full moons this month,
which I conclude are two full moons. In what
direction do the dead fly off the earth?
Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day.

--

 Jo McDougall, from Towns Facing Railroads.

Homeplace

Awake while you sleep,
I tie and untie the strings of what went wrong:
the farm auctioned, my father buried in Minnesota,
you and I alone
in a rented room.

I remember my father when I was six
pushing open a gate on the farm road,
stirring the dust of August.
The locusts sizzling in the grass,
a hum of dragonflies hanging sleepy above us.