Portrait of a Boy Returning to Dirt
We drive to Laredo from Dallas.
We pull into the lot because
the rest stop is a restless pit.
My father wants us
to know
his home.
Processed & waived.
The border is
so much waiting.
So much to confirm:
origins, passports
our other homes.
Finally, the desert,
the lonely tolls.
Checkpoints with portraits of Mexico,
mothers & their children.
They wait for someone
to buy their pan dulce,
their mangos
spiced with lime juice & chili.
We eat where we come from.
We drive through the ranged
mountains & see
fields of corn. My father’s dirt.
My foot remembers
stepping down
from his pickup
into my father’s village.
I’m a small child now
greeting my grandmother,
my grandfather,
my father’s playground.
This place he made clay his toy.
Where he said
I had nothing but this.
Elegy for My Mother’s Country
Distant thumbprints
on yellowed documents.
Blue ink of her father’s hand.
From the great beyond, my mother
hears the ghosts. This is what is left of us.
Her parents’ willed blood into a document.
Their last testament: You can have this
plot of land. For all the plans made,
dirt doesn’t always obey.
The news says her hands won’t reach so far
from the Rio. In the time of narco
wars, her sister warns her
of the impossible task,
to claim the last piece,
she must make it worthwhile.
What does my mother think
of the place she leaves?
I catch her voice
trembling for the small sum
she can pass to her children,
who whine & can’t afford
to have ties to apartments.
In six months, I must leave this place.
In the time of children
separating at serrated borders—
my mother still has pride
for what she can offer.
Her parents knew
anything was better than nothing.
This is her last chance.
My faith in her bound by blood.
At sixty, my mother wants to hold
her right hand up, swear to God &
say, I am citizen.
What’s left for me
must be held as prayer.
Her motherland.
Her childhood.
I must listen to her:
My mother, the country I will never know.