"collectivism: ...farmers who have nothing, meet once a week to distribute it"

Collin Cotterill

Dia de los muertos

Renacen los huertos,

tambien los muertos.  

El dia de los muertos

Por siete minutos

 podemos platicar

con los seres queridos fallecidos.[1]

 

I remember

tagging along,

chasing my abuela,[2]

To el camposanto,[3]

to sell paper flowers

to make the somber tombs bright.

That was back in Mexico.  

I was only seven years old.  

Here in the U.S.,

los muertos[4] are

personas non gratas.[5]  

Here we do not wish

to hold dialogue with los muertos.  

They remind us

We too will eventually join them.  

Here there is no luto[6]

And there are no novenas[7]

Or puños de tierra[8]

 Here in the U.S.,

the idea is to hide,

to ignore the dead,

And even to avoid death

in our conversations.  

In Mexico la muerte

is well known.  

She’s a talaca, a feminine figure.  

Our Puerto Rican

brothers and sisters

call her “la flaca.”[9]

Talking with the dead is necessary

to remind ourselves

to enjoy our lives

And not go about

as if we had already died,

And no one said good-bye or cried.

Abelardo B Delgado  From “Cool Salsa  Bilingual poems about growing up Latino in the US”  Lori Carter, Editor

---

[1]   The orchards regenerate, and so do the dead.    On the Day of the Dead for seven minutes we can talk with our loved ones who have passed away.

[2]   grandmother

[3]  cemetery

[4]   the dead

[5]  (latin) unwelcome person

[6]   mourning or period of mourning

[7]   in this context, fervent prayer for the faithful dead

[8]   handfuls of earth

[9]   The skinny one

"They passed a magician with a bald head, a street fiddler, and an umbrella seller, his wares opened around his feel like black silken mushrooms"

from "The Whipping Boy" by Sid Fleischman

"In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay, blowing their whistles....

the deep laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay."

from "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

We lived here one year, This cannery is now a very nice (pricey) restaurant, 

What would Steinbeck have had to say about that, I wonder?

"slow as the hands of a schoolroom clock"

From "Lobsters in the Window" a poem by W.D Snodgrass

Thanks to cartoonstock  dot com

"The beam cut a smoky purple groove through the dark."
From "Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen

"Flashlight beams sabered through the curtains."
from "Slash and Burn" by Colin Cotterill

"It is important that there should be places where not a great deal happens because such places remind us that life is not entirely and exclusively made up

of exciting or significant events."

From : The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection." by Alexander McCall Smith

pictures of Michael's visit to China, where we alternated between high energy adventures and exhaustion.