Ajijic Medley

 

I. WIND

I live in a place

where the mountains are emerald

I live in a place

where the lake is alive.

I live in a place where the winds,

oh the winds all have names!

 

From the east comes the dear Mexicano.

Kissing my cheeks from the west

is the sweet Abajeño.

And blowing from the south

is the sultry Sureño.

When it wafts from the south and the east,

it’s called the Guaracheño,

while the one that blows

from the south and the west

is named the Colimote.

 

I live in a place

where the mountains are emerald

the lake is alive.

and the winds,

oh the winds all have names!

 

II. RAIN

She pays her call in the dark

and crawls under the covers with me.

Holding nothing back,

she pours her power down for hours.

 

Rain in the night,

a monsoon on my roof,

her heartbeat

full-strength, steadfast.

 

Her drumming opens my ears,

opens a portal to a place

that makes me wake, and smile,

wide with late-learned grace.

 

When Her drumbeat recedes,

it’s a delicate dance of retreat that

lingers like a lover’s fingers…

 

I blow a kiss of gratitude,

as Her presence vanishes.

And then the silence reverberates

with her absent music.

 

III. RHYTHM

From the beach on Sundays

the rhythms of Mexican families

come right through my window.

Families, as if in their kitchens:

laughing voices, radio rancheras,

the scent of roasted chicken.

I hear the children at their games

as if we shared a living room—

And don’t we?

Live in the same, one

worldhouse?

 

IV. TRUST

I live in a village that opens me

I live in a village that invites me

I live in a village that embraces me

I live in a village that grows my trust.

 

V. MOTHERVOICE

On the shore of Lake Chapala

I feel again the floating,

and the streaming into me

of those consoling sounds,

the mother voice,

the only one that travels

not through air but through the fluids.

 

Lullabyed by lapping

I am, once more, inside,

rocked by the whoosh of my mother’s blood,

bathed in the rhythm of her beating heart.

On the shore of Lake Chapala,

again I hear the melody

of speech without the consonants—

a muffled flow of vowel song,

in the swishing, amniotic sea.

 

©Susa Silvermarie 2017