Azuls de Barrancas del Cobre (Copper Canyon Blues)

Azuls de Barrancas del Cobre    
(Copper Canyon Blues)    
 
Dusty Chihuahua desolation    
At lonely train depot    
Desert crossroads for rail journey  
 
Arrival    
Copper Canyon is cantina calypso drums    
On the slopes of the valley spirit    
and the manger in a holy hostel  
is a bunk bed for my blue traveler soul    
Where a feminine voice sings from above    
A rosary in Spanish timbre    
As I sink into a paradise of lullabies    
To her novena nirvana  
 
When the sun returns like a prodigal son    
My bunkmate descends the ladder    
Like the Náhuatl goddess, Iztaccíhuatl    
Floating down from her mountain realm    
Where she slept for millennia    
In the Yolteotl dream which is the heart of God      
Only to awaken to wash the sleep  
from her third eye in the lave    
 
“You Americans are so strange,” she says.    
“What brings that thought    
to a maiden in her first communion dress    
on this day of creation?” I ask    
“You gaze at me like I am the answer    
to your prayers,” she says    
“Pray for my lost soul,” I invoke.    
“Let me take you to heaven,” she says  
 
And I follow her into the abyss of love    
We walk the chasm of rock    
Along the worn path    
To a hut where sage smoke is fragrant    
as the incense on a Mexican altar    
Where she must pray    
In her village home  
 
We sit on a ledge    
And watch the clouds burn dark crimson    
as chili peppers strung across the terracotta sky    
I sort them in my mind    
When she holds my hand    
And the stars are a million candles    
That light the sky in a luminaria    
of floating islands    
where sentience may dwell    
We whisper in the quiet    
Until dawn dreams are ours to keep  
 
I buy her a train ticket    
and she joins me on my hajj    
To a Mexican Mecca    
Our steel-wheeled palanquin    
Ascends the wizened old mountains    
and the depot is no longer lonely    
When we step out into the crystal blue    
Sierra Madre air    
Where angelic girls sell roses    
to moon-eyed tourists    
And I buy one wrapped in cellophane    
Telling her she is the flower    
Whom I will marry    
Her brown eyes smile  
 
“Will you stay by my side here in Mexico?”    
“America is a land of money    
but my heart is Mexican.”    
“What will your family think    
of you marrying a little brown chick?”    
“My mother, God rest her soul,    
wanted me to get hitched  
with a nice Catholic girl.”    
“Would she approve of all the reefers I toke    
even during Lent?”    
“Her biggest worry    
was that my bride might not like cats.”    
“Well, she can rest in peace    
because my spirit animal is a kitty.  
But I am a lapsed Catholic    
who doesn’t go to church    
because I don’t care to share    
my hash brownie recipe with the Ladies’ Guild    
much less confess that habit to a priest.”    
 
My amused smile
makes her laugh at my American hubris
and she gathers the strands of my hair
like curls of smoke from an incense dish  
Yin: “You need cannabis in your peace pipe.”
Her lips burn a path  
like the earth’s first chlorophyll fire
Chromosomes blossom in my cellular heaven  
where double helices link  
like DNA braids  
in the joined nuclei  
of our hearts  
 
In the beginning, the earth blushed
like a peach ripening on the tree  
whose sugar had yet to be tasted
by tribes yet unborn
when the root of heaven
was a sage song unsung
    
We fly on metal wings  
like Quetzalcoatl    
into the blue Aztec night of Teotihuacan    
where in the golden eternity of morning  
I serenade her with gondolier songs    
and she coos like the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square    
But the floating gardens of Xochimilco    
are where we join hands as campesinos    
to grow a plot of love