Category: San Miguel de Allende

Poems from Mexico

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE:VIGNETTES

    THREE VIGNETTES

    (1)

    It is uncouth to jolt

    In a Ford LTD over

    The cobblestones of

    San Miguel de Allende.

    Along such passageways,

    The dusty sandal

    Proceeds with more grace.

    (2)

    Vitamined and mineraled,

    The gringo father and daughter

    Stride in holy day processions

    Behind black-manteled, ancient

    Women so bowed by arthritis

    Their eyes see only dust.

    (3)

    Playing maid on Estrella’s day off,

    Hanging clothes in the garden,

    Wary of an inquisitive grackle,

    I step around rosemary, high

    As spreading juniper, and admire

    Lettuce – wavy red and knots

    Of Boston green – next to

    Flowerets of purple thyme.

  • SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE:COLECTIVO

    EL COLECTIVO

    (THE COLLECTIVE FARM)

    Two farm boys, careless of typhoid,

    Bounce  on braying burros and trade

    Obsidian arrowheads for pesos.

    Piglets scatter.  A vermillion flycatcher

    Flies over  the prickly pears.

    Grandfather in white suit and

    Sombrero signals the German

    Shepherd to round up the herd..

    Horses trot downhill among

    Mesquites which goats on hind legs

    Mount in search of moist mouthfuls.

    Dry grass and dusty furrows

    Must wait yet another month

    Until the rains may or may not come,

    While out in the purple valley

    Unreachable reservoirs gleam.

    A sailboat crosses at sunset.