THE YEARLY VISITOR
In the fruit
bowl
your
fingerprints are
like feathers
resting.
Every year you
come,
like the
laundress, to clean
our souls of
their thrashed moments.
Our arms
extended to distant mountains
beg for your
caresses.
You prefer to
sit like an owl
that blinks,
then flies away
in the night
with a screech.
Can we be
unmuzzled to call
in a whisper
your name
in moonlight
among ribbons of air
that howl
through the porch screens?
You sit hugging
your knees
as if they are
a refuge.
This is our hangout
open to stars
that we'll
never finish counting
before winter.
It is your
laugh we remember then;
your laugh,
like a balm for the cruel winds
of anxieties
that flutter from room to room
even when the
windows are closed
and the ground
is covered with pecan shells
and with balls
of dirty cotton
from the gin
next door.
We eat pecans
and wonder
if you will
return in summer.
From your
spirit a cascade of rose water falls.
Your eyes, like
feathers, brush us in the surprise
of a morning
prayer answered.
-- C.S. Cholas
July 1986,
Berino, NM
(for MZ)
