July 10, 1988
(I was 43)
At
age 3
Lauren found God in Mexico
(Cuernavaca to be exact).
I was searching for a
brujo,
looking for a nagual
lurking in the ancient
arts,
some sculpture that I
touched to touch me back,
some literary peace in Octavio
Paz,
echoes from Indian flute
and guitar and drum,
a shrine open to pilgrimage
by taxi.
As I called one to the curb
her small voice rasped the
back of my neck,
“God doesn’t know how to
drive, huh?”
Jésus!
At age 7
Nathan, a.k.a. Batman
walked the markets in
Cuernavaca, in Tepotzlan, incognito
(his sensitivity to
injustice gave him away).
Hundred-peso coins dropped
from his hand,
from his unwarranted guilt,
into the hat of the legless
leaning against a white wall,
into the kerchief of
withered señora at the corner,
onto the plate of a man his
own age
sleeping beneath his
mother’s guitar and father’s song,
and in the palm of the
eyeless man
who still saw Nathan’s
knowing eyes.
Each one blessed him and
his parents.
When the bat signal faded
from the night sky
he said to me,“The poor are
always with us.”
Jésus!
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