Gabriela

She was the moon-washed, lush Pacific night,

and I wished against nature

to still the crash of waves to hear her every sigh.

In the night of tossed bedclothes

and palm-framed balcony doors flung wide,

her thighs about me, pressing at my heart,

I opened her against the slightest of protests.

“I am black” she whispered from the back of her throat.

That was all.

Glints of wavetop silver shimmered on the wall,

illuminating the brown and pink of her...

where I laid my need and plumbed her own so gently.

Some moments are all there is...

some sensations tell you all.

All that night we told each other these same, simple things.

Ah, but see how the dawn always drives lovers hopelessly

along sad and divergent paths....

Months later

a day came and went

when it could have been again

And the crashing waves-–on hold like stop-motion–-

continued their eternal back-and-forth.

And those footprints on the sand are no more.


[This appears in my "Mexico--Dust in My Blood"]