En cinco de mayo

          I

I no longer go to Mexico,
though Mexico
may come to me
in my sleep.

I dream she goes there.
Or is she in Venice now?
That is when I wake
but never know the hour.

Now I work,
if you can call it work,
this finger dancing
I do every day.

Or is she in Amsterdam?
another city I’ll never know
now I’ve never learned to swim
and have put down my horn.

She comes up to me
where my table is
and floors me
with her uncommon beauty,

I don’t know who she is.
I memorize her face.
All I know I feel
like the sound of espanol.

She’s kept her distance
since learning my story.
Who could blame her?
Water wears every thing down.

I was walking the Alameda,
the Museum of Anthropology
with Betty. She died recently
in Sausalito. I was here.

I’m on the corner of Mina
y Buenavista,
crossing the street between
Hotels Ibero and Londres.

I know enough Spanish
to deliver in a pinch.
But no Italian,
no Dutch.

  II

The joke is on me
if I'm not there to hear.
I never know where
I am or what I see.

I don’t remember.
I take a walk or two
and sit a while in bars,
dreaming what I know.

Time comes I go home.
Cathleen is my bruja
and I her brujo.
Magic is what we have.

She is always here,
even when she’s only near
with another man
and I with the same woman.

My song’s gone wrong,
this ladder of quatrains.
The woman who returns
sings her own song.

(5 May 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander