SEEDS

Like the Nutcracker bird
who hides his seeds,
some in the river cliffs,
some in the cottonwood tree,
then in winter searches
them out again, I want
to spend long hours
with a cup of tea and only
the sounds of wind chimes
in the yard, searching out
questions without answers,
like: How do we know? and
Is time real? I don’t need
any more talk about carb diets,
or ways to remove mudstains
from carpet.
                     Tell me instead
why the moon’s face
is always toward us, or how
birds sense the coming of spring.
Help me find the seeds hidden
in ordinary places,
the most unlikely places of all.

~ Dorothy Howe Brooks

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Note: In 1934, the year of the poem, January 6 was the big day for celebrating Xmas.

My First Tropical Christmas

“No hableh ingléh en Viequeh,”
(Do not speak English in Vieques)
I still remember my mother’s words
a few days before Christmas
and after we had just completed
a five-day steamship voyage to Puerto Rico
and a long drive in a público to Fajardo
where we were waiting for “La lancha”
to brave the choppy straits for two hours
and land us on my mother’s home island,
Vieques, an island off 
the eastern shore of Puerto Rico,
itself an island in the West Indies.

And I still remember
that when half the island came
to greet my mother
and see the first americano
born in the family
and hear him speak English
and kept demanding
“Habla ingléh, habla ingléh,.”
that I held out for as long as I could,
repeating after each request
my mother’s admonition,
“No hableh ingléh en Viequeh.”
but the bribes of bananas, oranges,
sugar cane and pennies were too great
for four year old me to resist
and I succumbed by reciting
the first stanza of the Star Spangled Banner
that my brother had taught me
before I left New York
and even though I was not too sure
of the meaning and pronunciation
of many of the words,
a shower of applause and pennies
rewarded my first venture
into performance poetry.

A few days later
I wowed the crowd even more
at my uncle Agustin’s house
when I remembered it was Christmas
and added to my repertoire
“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town”
but when I asked, 
“¿cuándo viene Santa Claus?”
I was given the bad news:
Vieques was one town
Santa (San Nicolás) didn’t go to.

Everyone watched my reaction
in a careful silence
until my devastation was relieved
by my uncle’s revelation
that there were Tres Reyes,
Gaspar, Melchor and Baltasar
who delivered presents
not on Christmas Day
but on January 6 because
the camels on which they traveled
were much slower than reindeer.
They would be tired and hungry
and if I left some straw for them
in a shoebox, the next morning
I might find presents.
‘Three Santa’s! Three times more presents!’
I remember thinking in English,
‘and they don’t even have a list
of who’s naughty and nice.’ 

I obeyed and did not speak English in Vieques
except on those performance occasions
and that one time when my Uncle Braulio
tripled the ante to three pennies
to hear me say the “f” word
but the Spanish I spoke
was an equal source of delight  —
larded with English words and syntax
hybrid utterances such as
me comí five bananas and no me gustan anyway
were preserved in family lore for decades.
I didn’t realize then
I was one of the pioneer speakers of Spanglish. 

There were parties every night,
and three of my uncles were the island’s musicians
and my cousins and I
would accompany them on parrandas
to people’s houses where they played
while everyone sang aguinaldos
and danced and ate and drank
and partied on to the next house
with many of us being carried sleepily
and piled on beds and hammocks
at each stop.

On New Year’s Day, I wept with my cousins
who were heartbroken over the slaughter
of their pet suckling pig, Cucharón,
but that evening we fought over the rights
to his cuerito — roasted crinkled skin,
that tasted better than candy.

Barefoot and happy the entire time,
I spent my second remembered Christmas 
with coconut palms instead of pine trees,
sand instead of snow, sleeping in open shacks
without doors, rocking softly in hammocks
canopied with mosquito nets,
with Three Kings and camels and straw
and hand-made gifts in shoeboxes,
and family singing and dancing every evening ---
the rhythmic joy and faith of the aguinaldos
shining through their poverty,
illuminating and deepening
the memory and celebration
of all my Christmases to come.

Joe Pacheco

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Winter Solstice 2003
(Year of My Quintuple Bypass)

I thought at first
the cataracts had come back —
the sun glinting cold and yellow
over the courts into my eyes
brought  the Bollé glasses
out of the tennis bag.
I kept missing overheads
and it stayed that way
the entire morning.

Nor was noon much better —
the sun still low and stuck in time
as I drove on the causeway
to and from
the mainland mall madness,
gray Gulf and sky,
whatever was left of day
shrouded in jaundiced twilight.  

So that for once
I was relieved to see night begin
with Venus burning bright
and low like a jetliner
and even lower on the horizon
the thin crescent of moon
slivering into renewal. 

From darkest day had come
most shining night
and on this longest night
of my longest year —
the promise
of ever-brightening days
waiting to rise
above my horizon.

~ Joe Pacheco

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City Shadows
by Hank Heitman

A fixture in almost every neighborhood,
the homeless person haunting the street,
wearing an entire wardrobe,
head covered by a dirty hooded sweatshirt
wheeling all belongings in a shopping cart,
draped by bags of collected bottles,
and various junkyard treasures,
performing a walk to nowhere.
A silent sad death march
aimless, accepting and dismal,
allowed little recognition and dignity,
amidst the cold, the dirt, and the dampness
a player in a sad scenario,
a solitary soldier in an army of many,
searching for a path to glory,
finding only a trail of tears.

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Where were you on
December 7, 1941?

In the back storage room
of our family bodega sitting
on a sack of kidney beans,
listening to the Football Giants-Dodgers game
when the announcer interrupted
to report that the Japs
had sneak- attacked us and my brother
ran to the front of the store
to tell my mother and the customers
while I took advantage of the distraction
to sneak two maraschino cherries
from the jar they thought
they had hidden from me,
then I listened to the game
and more news and a whole gang
of my brother’s friends came into the store,
all talking at once, saying how they
would all go together
to the recruiting offices
in Times Square tomorrow morning
to sign up before the war ended 
because we were sure  
to beat the Japs quickly
but they changed it to the afternoon
because my brother had school
and one of the others had a job;

the Giants lost
and I went into the front of the store,
my brother asked me the score of the game,
and I told him:
“Ace Parker did it to us again.” 

Joe Pacheco

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What Makes Little Girls Scream?

What makes little girls scream?
Where do they train to screech so like a bird of prey?
Is it at their mother's knee, or learned some other way?
Is it just an accident?
a chain reaction that occurs when
too many pony tails and pinafores
are gathered in one place?
Or, absent any master plan,
is it—just because they can?

When do little girls scream?
Does it spring from boundless glee
that follows every child's surprise?
Is it from that special thrill
that comes from excess speed downhill
as on a roller coaster ride?
Or does it come from primal fear,
a hairy touch in a haunted house
one feels at Halloween?

Why do little girls scream?
Might it be a practice for those later times in life
when nothing else will do except to just release a squeal?
Like meeting up with long lost friends
to celebrate a ring?
Or holding tight a broken child who, for a moment, seems
beyond the reach of earthly things,
but then returns and smiles and squirms,
and softly tries to sing?

What makes little girls scream?
Do they in subconscious minds look far beyond their years?
Can they see some distant time when
their exalted role as Mom has passed
and they can revel in the birth of each grandchild?
Or somehow sense a somber time
when fifty years of love and dreams becomes
a pound or two of ashes in an urn?
Is this, then, after all is done—is this

what makes little girls scream?

 

            -- Larry Stiles

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The Proposal by Mari Hopp

Nicia and Samuel laughed and cried together through the past two years.
They had Christian fellowship, retreats, prayer, praise, parties, Bible Studies,
Time with her parents and family and with his. Movies, hiking, camping
And fishing, late marshmallow roasting and private dream wishing.
Now Nicia journey was coming to a turn. Which way will the
relationship go today? Samuel with towel in hand and beautiful bowl
Lowered to his knees. He took off her shoe and washed her feet
As he asked her “Will you allow me to cherish and protect you?” To always be true ?”
To serve only you in Christ until heaven we depart?” “Truly my darling you
Are a masterpiece of Jesus’s art.”

 Nicia’s eyes swelled with humble, gentle tears that flowed onto her cheeks.
She stooped down and cupped Samuel’s head in her hands. Looking into his deep, green eyes she said
“ Yes, let’s dance through this life with each other.” “Through all the
problems and strife. I would love to forever be Jesus’s bride and your wife.”

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If I Must Be Out Of Place

If I must be out of place
let me be a bell
calling in the desert
to mountain cactus blooms.

Or the wild horse, perhaps,
who runs through a valley
where the monk, silent,
meditates on still life
with cherries and a golden flute.

If I must be out of place
let me be the bridge,
abandoned,
except by those who keep secret
the conversations among trees --

which whisper of fear of fire in the distance,
of ways shadows tickle
as they move across leaves,
and of dreams of flying with redwings
who sleep each night in their branches.

Carol Drummond
(published in the Florida Weekly and The News Press)

 

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