Pilgrimage to the Hills above Dodger Stadium
                                    –In memory of Manazar Gamboa

Again we arrived, the rain pouring into us
like sheets of metal.  We trespassed
for your solemnity, standing on a hillside
supple rose petals between our fingers.

God laughed thunder.  Your pearl whites
now dust beneath my feet.
At 1:30 p.m.–the sky polished itself.
Rain gods pushed away.  The blow-horn
of a gourd raised you in our hands.

Below us, in “La Bishop,” you sank deeply
into the wet earth
where you breathed your youth once
and made poems appear before you were ready.

Until you landed in a solitary place, not in the fields,
not near the ocean, not in your bedroom –
in a small cell behind bars.  You faced yourself
on pages of white lined paper
and dug deep just like your body did today.

So, my friend –

Today, was not a new experience for you.
You soaked into the earth with your pen
and your eyes, black and Apache.  Ancient.

You drove cotton into your hands with your songs
and your sisters’.  You dreamt of warriors:
Aztecs and sun gods
placed their hands on you, and from you
a child was born, Olmeca Sol, and a language
so old even the wind recognized it.

And then you were gone between the folds of our skin
something in all of us so old that recognized it, too.


Tina Demirdjian

home.earthlink.net/~poetina