a late-night poetry editing session

and the heart-ache to be in Nica that I experienced today led me to this poem. I wrote this one two summers ago and am thinking of ways to improve it now. But I like the memory of it.

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thunderstorm in Cedro Galan

Everything is falling into puddles.

It’s the rain that drops so heavy

on the these tin roofs that I fear

the skyline eroding,

or imagine it being torn

like a cat’s claws through curtains,

strings of it collapsing

into the carpet of dirt

and then trampled

and then buried.

The storm has brought

the power down

the way the mothers make dinner here,

some mighty force behind their hands

grinding, transforming things

into what they weren’t before.

Flattened tortilla shells,

black beans,

avocado soup

materializes like the darkness –

abundant and from nothing.

around me, small fingers

are threading themselves into moonlight,

like they could pull themselves up into it

even with everything falling down.

This is what I love:

how my skin is melting from my bones

with the weight of this country, how I can

touch Nicaragua’s spine, sharp and naked,

how I can rest in bed at night,

sweat lacing the insides of my knees

and weep to the sound of rain,

sad and synchronistic.

and what I love is that even among

this groaning there are the little ones

who will braid my hair, who hold my hand

with sticky-mango-juice-coated-moonlight-moth fingers.

They will sit on my lap while the rain pounds

and hum little songs in Spanish.

Their mothers will watch them squirm,

craving to be playing soccer,

and look up at me with their familiar eyes

brown and so dark that I have the sensation

of even my veins swelling up like the river

behind their neighborhood, too full.