Bouquete

Bouquete

Just ahead, around the coming curve,
There will be an intersection.
A guava tree where two red-dust roads will cross.
The woman with such poor memory waits there,

Shy as an adulterer, not knowing exactly
What to do with her eyes or breath or hands.
I’ll get there in a moment and I’ll stop.
Life works that way in the tropics.

Fruit falls off the trees whether we hear it or not.
Black birds slam into my window just to say:
Something is ahead. (Or something is behind.)
I have always known the woman waiting by the road.

And feeling the sharp memory, I focus.
How was it before, I ask.
And so we walk north,
hearing only the yellow-topped parrots.

After a while, our talk begins in earnest,
And centuries of words appear,
Words that must be said before
the next curve in the road. Before you leave.

By the mountain we slow our walk.
Freed from time but not from space,
We dread what’s around the curve.
Maracuya vines climbing the side of a hill.

We know the painful logic of these meetings,
Complicated by the tropical warp of time,
Full of tragic ending well before they end,
A promise that will have to wait for yet another life.