Flying Away

for Hawk

early morning
calla lilies open happily
as the bottle brush sway
camellias curtsy the
geraniums still slumbering
deep purple and
blood-red bougainvillea
drape over terracotta
bricks like a Spring
waterfall singing into
blue clay pot that’s a
round quiet face
with earrings
starring into the sun

monarchs fly south
all this way
I hope they caught
a glimpse of you
a few weeks ago
in Santa Cruz
before heading this way
that a bold one
flutter-kissed you
on your round
succulent cheek
I so miss kissing you
seventeen years is a long
cut out of a rock
like me

here I sit
in a beautiful
mountainside jardin
of a house carved
overlooking a river bank
from way up here
I can see
Popocatepetl and
at night the twinkle
star lights of Mexico City
who’s just erupted again
we’re old but still smoky
hot like those brick-red
chipotle chiles
I missed so much

I imagine you
many miles away
stepping out
of your childhood skin
yet keeping it close
instead of tossing it
trying on adulthood
like a new tuxedo
looking in the mirror
you’re not too sure
it’s you or if you could
ever really see
yourself in it though
the new feel is tempting

I’m here (starting)
another life
without you and
though my right arm
has not been lopped off
there’s (still) the feel
of something essential missing

the pen keeps moving
across the page but
my muses are saluting the sun
perched comfortably
in the fig and plum trees
alongside escaped parrots
showing off their tail feathers
while wolf whistling at me

gold canaries (who flew all the
way here from an elder’s patio in Morelia
who purposely left their bright bamboo cage doors
open so on that very day her soul could fly
with them as she passed into eternity)
sing a new day sun song as I sit here
thinking of you and
remembering the future


©Odilia Galván Rodríguez
Mexico City, February, 2003