Nights passed in days passing, years passed alone in trains moving over land where there was neither day nor night, clouds nor light, silence nor song but just the humming of metal on metal
“I am my own best lover” Michael told me once on a train like this one, apart from time and space, the words as important for me now as they were for him then. I, in my youth, understood, but did not know
There is no song like Spanish spoken slow and steady like her river, a language that calls the sun up, that softens the sundown, that speaks where before there was only music, that brings rain, where before there was only clouds and sky
So it’s only people that strive or suffer, not music, not language, not even poems written in the well of that song. The river, in turn, persists, indifferent, perhaps only unable to show gratitude for the song sung full, the words well and delicately spoken, the life lived richly… by whatever means
Clouds rise from that river without understanding what calls them back, give suck to cactus and broadleaf alike with no questions asked. They speak from the heart even as that heart stops beating
They cry as La Llorona cries, for youth that understands, but does not know, that sings, but can barely speak,
That can pass, but can only pass slowly through this world
… Laredo, Texas, 1981