La esperanza, siempre

La Esperanza, Siempre

I have shelves
and milk crates
stacked into corners,

storing my books
and my music and
to the side of the bed
the dusty guitar,
slowly dies into
a decoration.

A television
and a stereo
and those mahogany
dressers that remind me
always of my grandparents;

they are long dead now
but I find comfort in
supposing they live on
as some unconscious energy,

swirling in the topsoil and the galaxies.

Across the room
a pair of sneakers, capsized,
floats beside a Spanish dictionary

and 'la esperanza',
my slightest Hope,
goes bobbing up and down
atop a tiny raft of poetry,
with its' "Nineteen Varieties of Gazelle"

and I am pacified by their
assorted stories of family,
fatherhood and figs.

I remember that I’ve have made my own
stories about family or Spanish evenings

in bullrings laughing, our beautiful brotherhood

and Papa’s hot polenta on holidays.

Y claro, yo tengo la esperanza, siempre!  

 

-->2007