Armando Garcia-Davila is the author of collections of poetry, short stories, two novels. He has been widely published in newspapers, magazines, periodicals and anthologies. He served as the Literary Laureate of Healdsburg, California for 2000-2002.
A Winter’s Alcove
There are sorrowful chilled fogs these days that remind one of his mortality. We are in that season when the sun loses the eternal tug-of-war with the icy moon, as exhausted leaves fall like wounded soldiers from desperate trees.
It’s the time when the earth falls into her hibernation to conceive the unhappy dreams of lost loves, a time when we are reminded of whom we have offended and forgotten and left behind. It is the time of cold rains and hungry animals.
Let me kiss you, turn your collar up to the gray cold, take your hand, and strut the joyous walk of love defying the face of the storm. I will make a dry and warm alcove for you in this river of iced waters, put my arms around your sadness and for one brief and exotic moment take you to where we will lay naked on warm blessed sands, bask in the sun, and laugh at our melancholy.
Let us heap our fears in the cold night where they will feel at home, polish our joys, and wear them around our necks.
******
El Jardinero
I think of the señora in the morning, her legs, her arms; the sound of her laughter is the music of a silver harp guiding a lonely man to forgotten smiles.
Her hair is a field of gleaming wheat waving in a harvest breeze.
Señor Peacock fans his shining blue and green feathers and dances his luring dance for her, but alas in vain, for she would not settle for someone who offers only handsome plumage.
I think of her in the morning when the sun shines through her hair, aglow like a halo in the cool dawn. I hear her singing with the birds serenading and welcoming the world from the land of happy and sad dreams.
I think of her graceful walk, barefoot on rose petals, causing not so much as a bruise on those delicate wafers of the blossom.
I stole a glimpse of her silhouette through her gown. Sun rays hugged, then passed around her gentle curves that would frustrate the most skilled sculptor.
I dream of touching, of embracing her, but what will she have of someone who is only hired to tend her garden? But that I could simply hold her smooth feet in my hands and wash them a hundred times and when she naps, steal a kiss on each toe, on each heel, on each ankle, on each sole.
But that I could tell her of my love of her spirit. But that we could sit under the oak tree together, speaking only with our eyes.
This mid-day is hot, but I see her in the cool morn, watering her garden while humming the hymn of the contented.
******
If I Could
If only for a moment, I would silence the world’s motors, and the roar of the airplane would not be so much as hum, and the thunder of the locomotive would become less than a moan.
No blaring horns, no screeching brakes, no screaming police sirens would wail from the avenue. The din of Industry would cease, and the factory would fall into a coma. Its smoke would lift allowing the forest to inhale deeply and once again we would drink from the river. The miracles of dawn and dusk would reclaim their sacred stillness.
Children would play a game of statues, and the wino, realizing the gift of his existence, would leave his bottle corked.
The right would swing to the left; and the left would not know where to turn. Politicians would be left without plots to hatch, and the devil would run out of tricks.
Shouts would turn to whispers, whispers to prayer and prayer to silent meditation. Chicks in their nests, would sleep, and in every canton and hamlet, in every town and city, one would only hear the rhythmic breathing of deep slumber and the throbbing of their own hearts, and the only sounds interrupting this immense meditation would be the wisps of butterfly wings and a peace-filled chant echoing gently throughout the earth.
“Love.” “Love.” “Love.”
******
Lonely
No one knocks at my door.
No one calls me on the phone.
There are no notes left on my porch nor a letter in the mail.
A nutshell lies on the ground; its meat stolen by an uncaring squirrel.
I heated my dinner and ate.
It was quietly good.
I will retire.
My bed will be warmed solely by my body.
Tomorrow I will eat breakfast, make a lunch, and go to labor.
When I return, I’ll listen to Moonlight Sonata,
and no one,
will knock,
on my door.
Mi Leona
My love is a lioness as she rips her passions into my neck and shoulder. She is a thousand, thousand kisses falling on me like hot rain. She is a hundred red explosions.
My love is an agitated ocean pounding wave after wave, covering my jagged crags in her white foam again and again and then again pitching her steam high into the air.
Her sensual fingers explore and pinch and rub, making love to my arms and chest and hair.
My love is Cupid’s mischievous arrow pricking me here and there and here again.
Naked she is beauty and all things desirable like the silver moons of August. Her shoulders are the whitest powdered snow inviting me to be the first to pass over them.
Our loving is angry and joyful and laughter and tears and delicious perspiration.
******
Monks of the Field
Now, cool, quiet, serene. Hills the green of Ireland.
Clear as glass, this February air.
And sun, glorious sun, against a sky so deep, so blue,
one forgets it has ever rained.
Faint sounds from the distant valley below:
a car engine on a road a long way off,
the cawing of crows echoes overhead.
A single engine airplane sputters along an endless horizon.
Snip, snap, clip-clip, snap the rhythm of pruning shears in the strong and calloused hands of workers.
A laborer, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, looks intently at the dormant vine in front of him as if it is the only vine on earth. No words are spoken.
“Field workers,” “farm workers,” “campesinos,” from Oaxaca, from Jalisco, from Michoacan, a hundred places that one hears of.
But monks they are, monks of the field, observing an unspoken oath of silence, observing an ancient and holy motto: “Laborare orare est”— To work is to pray.”
Each man living, working in the moment, in the second, no tomorrow for him, no yesterday, no morning, or evening; only the ever present now.
Sixty-five acres—50,000 vines to prune over these hills and valley.
Are there too many for this crew of Alejandro, Noè, Manuel, Crisando, and Gabriel? Only one vine in the here, in the now, for each silent man.
By-and-by each vine will be pruned and retied to the stake, then to the galvanized wire. By-and-by all pruned branches tossed between the narrow rows will be disked and tilled into the vineyard to become soil.
By-and-by each vine will be sulfured in spring, thinned in summer, its purple fruit gathered in a frantic fall harvest when the sugar content is exact.
But in this now, there is only an infinite blue heaven, and silent monks of the field; their pruning shears chattering in the quiet.
******
We Breathe You
There was a curious dusting of a talcum-like substance on my car this morning. It dissipated into the air when I drove off.
Then it came to me, the fires. The terrible, terrible fires that are reducing your homes, your towns, even some of you into fine ash that is carried on the wind twenty, thirty, fifty miles off.
We read newspapers, see the pictures and videos, wring our hands and praying for you.
My wife packed blankets, pillows, food, and water. “Take them to Community Market,” she said.
“Paper says that they’ll get them to the victims.”
I drove the supplies to the market but couldn’t get into the parking lot for the lines of
others coming to drop off their boxes packed with concern and love.
Then I heard that I could take the items to the union hall— “We hoped to get enough
to fill a semi-truck load,” the man at the hall said, “but we filled it on the first day, we’re sending for another.”
So many good people.
And the ash of your homes, of your towns, of you—we breathe it in taking you into our bodies—You have become a part of us, and steam in our blood and into our hearts.
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After he retired and moved to Sedona, Arizona, he taught literature at Yavapai College in Clarkdale, Arizona.
He and professional artist Bev Kephart bought a small motor home in 2003, sold most of their possessions, and traveled the U. S. for seven years. After visiting Mexico several times, they settled in the village of Ajijic, joining the ex-pat artist and writing communities.
Mel’s writing has been published online and in print in The United Kingdom, The United States, Mexico, New Zealand, and Australia. He is the author of three novels, a book of short stories, and several books of poetry. He and his wife now make their home in the village of San Nicholas de Ibarra.
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