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With the Eyes of a Raptor Two books contained in one volume. Poems filled with loss, memory, tragedy and humor. Moon Over Andros Beach in memory of Galit Tonight the blacksmith moon hammers a plating of silver on the Aegean Sea. From the town of Chora, above, a halo dim as candlelight spreads over the beach. Daughter, your voice comes ashore, lingers in the pools of liquid moonlight left behind by the sea’s ebb. The waves bring you back again and again. The ceaseless churning and tumbling of pebbles, history, and memory. (page 8) Mira La Luna This land of the Hellenes rises like Tenochtitlán, the ruins of Teotihuacan and the Mexican moon. Here Poseidon threw down his trident. Athena planted her olive tree and claimed the Acropolis. The gods favored her. Athena’s moon is of olives and wine, La Placa moon, taverna moon, la llorona moon, gravestone moon. “Mira la luna,” I said to my daughter. It is still her moon. Forever. (page 9) Rio Grande el rio grande three words in Spanish or English become the mud red water the thunderheads with clouds rain like a wide-skirted walking woman or narrow like a thin man Navajos call this the Mexicans’ river and female river while I prefer the rio bravo the fearless river south of El Paso it is the river of potsherds of dreams a crying woman drowns her children and looks for them in the mother ditch her brambled arms grasp the shimmering air it is the river near the Central Avenue Bridge where I never find my daughter blood red water flows over me watermelon sun of dawn and twilight rises and sets on the Albuquerque bosque heat bakes the riverbed cracks it like weathered shoe leather the wind sweeps my ashes across a crow’s blank gaze. (pages 35-36) |
