The Huastec People

I see you there by the water's  
edge, dear great-great-
great-great-grandmother.  
Please, tell me—why have  
I been sent back?  
Tears rise in me, but I  
fear punishment, like Sisyphus,  
doomed to forever push this stone.  
I no longer have the  
strength for it.
 
So I speak to the trees,  
Listen to the grass swaying  
in the wind, breathe in the scent  
of Mother Earth. Do you not  
hear her struggle to breathe?  
I read of how humans hunted the  
dodo to extinction,  
smashing the skulls of the  
last two and stealing the egg,  
which now sits on some
 collector’s shelf.  
And the bison—so many near  
extinction, their thunderous  
hooves almost faded out entirely.  
 
Do you feel the vibrations  
shifting, as I do?
Don’t you see? It’s all connected.  
How I wish to return to your  
time, running freely through  
the jungles, watching the birds soar on their migrations, the water falls.
 
How big was our village,  
I wonder? A place where I  
knew only a few, those closest  
to me, each face a familiar one.
Descendants of the Mayans,  
we were. How I long for one  
more day there, in peace—
alone with the embrace of
Mother Nature. That was true peace.  
I was whole, untouched by the  
tyrrany of this modern world.
I am proud—yes, proud—
of the blood that courses  
Through me, the blood of the  
Huastec People.