Camote

                                                                                                “¡En verdad, digo!

                                                                                                Nadie ha comprendido la raiz

                                                                                                de esta Causa…” – Bahá’u’lláh

                        I cannot see far behind me

                        My father’s youth exists,

                        But is beyond me, like a root

                        Hidden in the soil of memory.

                        I surmise what emotions

                        Filled his life in those early years.

                        I only know him from what he is to me now;

                        The tree that he has been to my life, my childhood,

                        My emotions.  The future is less clear.

                        Captured in the irony of time; surrounded

                        By timeless realities.  I am trapped.

                        I go from meal to meal, from pain to pleasure

                        And back again.  I feel coldness, hotness, hardness,

                        Anxieties of the hour, an euphoric moment, from dream

                        To dream, rotation of the earth from light to dark,

                        Then dawn comes up like a relative, an inconsistent friend

                        Under the absolute sun.

                        I struggle, endure darkness, and yearn for daylight.

                        A girl sells camote on a Cuernavaca sidewalk.

                        Curious, I ask about its name, its life.  It is a root

                        Come up from the dark underworld for our pleasure.

                        The girl cuts one for me to share with my friend.

                        Eaten in a delicious joy, we thank her and give her five pesos.

                        She smiles in the morning light and says, “de nada,”

                        O, but it is!

-         C. S. Cholas

24 December 1982

Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico