Hotel with Birds
(Mexico.)
- Across the courtyard from the balcony
- the pigeons walk the red clay tile
- of the hotel roof, a scramble of pipes
- and chimneys, flower pots, extra tile,
- discarded fluorescent lights....
- The tiles are not fastened down.
- The hot air rises through them,
- the rain runs off. There is
- a gutter where the pigeons sleep.
- They land on the rim of the wooden water barrel
- and bend over to drink, their tails
- flipped up like hands raised in salutation.
- They are a bird like us, with their persistent courting
- and the song they mumble about the bushes of love.
- I gave my heart away this winter. I had held it
- in my fingers so long, heavy red clay muscle
- waking me up tired in the morning.
- How fine it is to have this circulation start
- in another body, and come back! I am easy
- on my feet, like a young girl dancing in her room,
- like yesterday's sparrow that coasted through the door
- swooped 'round our room, and left without grazing a wall.
- Plain brown sparrows nest in the beams
- over the balcony. They hop through
- the bars of the parrot's cage
- and drink his water, peck at his feed.
- We saw black swans in the lake at the park
- bobbing their heads for each other, cooing, their song
- like a wind between their bodies, not a word to be heard
- just some nonsense caught in the nodes of harmony
- and sent out over the dirty water and the peanut shells.
- Where did I get this phrase about the heart? I just
- remember Reverend Francis in his woodshop, bored,
- listening to the woman complain about her son who
- "hasn't given his heart to Jesus" (and Francis
- nodding, rocking in his chair, leaving her alone).
- Last year I'd sit by myself and read
- in the barrio church. At one of the side altars
- an old black-and-white etching
- of the Child with an armful of hearts,
- holding one forward with his left hand.
- Drops of blood. The small clipped photos
- of children stuck around the image
- in thanks or petition. Solemn faces,
- the serious mood of a photographer's booth.
- Outside, a courtyard and trees painted white
- at the bottom. Birds and dust.
- The tiles on the hotel roof are a porous, earthy red,
- like flower pots. They are just laid there without
- mortar and soak up the sunlight and the heat.
- The pigeons move confidently, their wiry feet clicking
- as they go. They stop and coo at anything their size,
- then fly up and circle, a clapping of wings, an ovation.
- She took my heart as lightly as one of her own breaths,
- one of her laundry hums, simple--not that
- acrylic green and bossy parrot yelling papá,
- but the dun-colored birds at the peak of the roof
- where the mud tiles fold over as if melted,
- where the song carries--take my heart, my purr,
- my ruffled blood--and the pigeons walk,
- all shoulder and breast beneath the bobbing, servant head.
