Daughters of the Dusty Avenues

Daughters of the Dusty Avenues    
   
An emaciated woman in a Mexican daze  
Carries a baby in arms still strong  
Enough to love this child she bears  
   
Wife’s bodhisattva halo embraces the nativity    
of a Mesoamerican Madonna holding her baby    
in a circle of love.    
   
Beatified in luminescence  
Ascetic body lost to hunger  
Golden daughter of creation whose son shines    
Like the gold-leafed pages  
In her book of divine love  
His nursery rhyme eyes  
Are a shanty-town of tears  
My Spanish doesn’t cover her “Leche, leche”  
But my wife puts into English  
This lady’s plea for milk for her infant  
 
Wife feared men wearing sombreros  
Would come to steal her soul  
But her smile opens up like the sun  
Through the clouds  
My beloved parts with God’s money  
To nourish the hunger that knows no end  
We linger under the light of ten thousand suns    
until my wife kisses their earthen faces.  
 
Maternal love is eternal    
for the mother of the child of man    
in his Mexican blanket with her baby lean    
but not emaciated like his mother    
from the pesos spent on his diet    
while she withered like a rose.    
   
Until tables are laden with heavenly fruit    
For daughters of the dusty avenues  
Who sang to babies on soup kitchen row