El Campo

He holds the rope -- reata, reacts to life

in lassos and los gritos,

mingles with dust, washed down with cervezas.

She wears the shawl -- rebozo,

turquoise color of her village, los indios de la sierras,

reposes with children who run through open doorways

in laughter and sibling screeches of play.

Pride of man and of woman

Hand to hand

The man with cattle:

She with errands in town.

With his black boots, he kicks up the dust

She walks the narrow corridor along adobe walls:

her cheeks veiled in the shawl wrapped in thoughts

of her grandmother who passed away last week

on la finca en los altos at the age of ninety-five

on a day when the wind didn't move

as it liked to do in the folds and bends of the mountainsides.

She winds through the market smells

Of cloth, elote, cilantro and slabs of meat,

Perhaps from cows her man has slaughtered.

Home, now wrapped in sunset, like a shawl,

She handles knives on cebolla y carne,

Prepares to cook

For her man who shakes the corral from his pants

On el rancho where his lasso rests in a barn

Until its swish will slice the air again at dawn.

They sit silently

By the table after fans

Have blown the day's heat into a night

Outside the door where a horseshoe

Hangs crooked above it on a nail.

                                                                        -- C. S. Cholas,

                                                                                    Chihuahua, 23 de abril de 1986