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)