And I'm going to finish with a couple of poems
that I think Fay, I know Fay loved.
And then the last one.
These are very, very recent.
Celia Cruz.
How many people know who Celia Cruz is?
All right, thank you.
All right.
"Celia Cruz, Snow Angels" something
you're not going to see in Tucson.
Maybe there are desert angels.
I guess not.
"Celia Cruz, Snow Angels."
The Great Gatsby jazz, the sorrows
of summers where the wealthy misspent their wealth, making
the novice president an apt arbiter of a future
dulled by greed.
Thus the novel's hero dead by his rival's gun
tells this harsh truth.
Love does not conquest.
Legs are for icing over.
Diversions come as random as this afternoon's mumble of news
and sorrows and ice lakes.
Ah, Celia Cruz's Cuban Spanish brightens.
What is she saying?
And is it Spanish?
Outside children in puffy jackets and Christmas scarves
are lying on their backs in the new snow that
takes their bodies' offering.
There's laughter as moms and dads
and cousins and friends remember their time in snow's embrace.
Angels, these bodies become angels brought down
to Earth imprinted in snow.
What proof have we of these mythical creatures?
Do angels laugh?
Do they wear puffy jackets and patterned scarves?
Do they, once returned upright, begin to ball snow
into projectiles and smash their kin?
Are they cursing this white-ness?
Do they hear Celia Cruz's potent voice singing in Spanish
or maybe it is not Spanish, but another tongue, denser, deeper,
from a haven on this Earth that she hears on blue days
when the snow falls and children stuff themselves
into winter's heaviest fabrics, then
they fall quickly or slowly into crystalline heaven,
their winged arms and leaping feet
caught in a beat between sound and sorrow, mermaid and surf.