Through Michoacán where clouds
make up a second landscape in the sky,
I nurse the fare you meted out
in a spare cork-stoppered jar,
a journey’s worth of mezcalito,
in lieu of salt, a bit of Aristotle.
The bus grinds on. My gaze rises
past tassles of corn and cactus lobes
and hawks whose spirals shape the sky.
Up where the billows gape glistens
an aerial lake, on that lake’s edge,
a nebulous sierra mirage.
From clouds come clouds come clouds.
Vacío sin macizo no se puede ser.
Emptiness needs vessels to hold its spill.
Going needs somewhere to go.
***
I’ll be in Mexico City next week and to mark the occasion, my first visit back since 2006, I am gathering and curating the poems I have written about Mexico into a plaquette of which this is the title poem. Stay tuned.