A couple of people asked me if I would read the next poem.
It's about Mexico, a place that most of us have been,
Rocky Point.
The title, "Four Pelicans over Cholla Bay."
Flying in file over our beach at dusk,
they are at last lost to the headland of Puerto Peñasco.
Arriving in our gringo cars today,
we found the road to Mexico paved with beer cans bordered
by decaying cows unfenced as our eyes
in this strange, dry country.
Two tarantulas cross the road, hairy hands looking for shade.
All night, nearby, a tourist light fireworks.
Cold air comes from nowhere, under sleeping bag edges.
Sand toughens into fists.
Our fire shown on waves moving crosswise down
the beach, reflections of our eyes moving, unmeeting.
We're afraid of what?
Not desert or the sea bearing up shrimpers, distant lights
on calm black water.
This anger we have, the jaw's refusal
to speak love for one another.
We wake up with the scum of night clinging
to our spidered hands and faces.
Whole but incomplete unexploded firecrackers.
Mullet pop in the shallows like boys.
And the porpoise boy serves their need for fear and escape.
So I lie alone with the morning, one shell
washed on a beach of shells.
A lens gone into bright moving water.
Tropical fish through the glass surface or a mask.
And someone from the aluminum city of houses on trucks
skis above me, two trails of quick white.
Whatever it means, I don't like.
And I'm wading out of the ocean morning
when there they come around the point, the arrow
signal for all clear.
Satisfied pouches resting on breasts and feet drawn up
in the comfort of balance sailing
the air, four pelicans over Cholla Bay.