We knew
There were people with us there where faces blur
people in us there
whose hands grip her hat and the walking stick he rows
us down that river also our people
in a calabash skirt
We knew there were people with us
dreaming inside the stones
who left our mouths as horses stroked with the light
And so mine too would find me
Once, just a few weeks after my love my love
(I am touching my throat)
he said to me at that fountain near La Caleta
that he didn’t see the point in us continuing on
unceremoniously just like that
I was so hurt so brokenboned of heart because
he was for me a kind of psychic love
and plain like that he said I don’t see the point
So for days I slept all day until that little bird
flew into my room and landed on my foot
I screamed and scared so much away with that jolt
Those years were full of messages
How that bird woke me
in a kind of existential way
That’s when once just a few weeks later
I ran down
the long tear of a mountain
and felt that elder pass me over in the rain
to the younger one with the painted nails I was so surprised
that I was being passed from an elder to an ancestor who had died younger
and whose nails were so red
The elder said She is with you now
No such thing as alone
No such thing as done or a name or free
