Nights of Doctor Vallejo

The doctor likes to emerge with too much
on his tongue.
His family name is going nowhere.
The poet died.
The railroad worker does prison labor.
The doctor writes and writes and writes
and writes.

The senora would like to know
his plans. She has her own. How do they mesh?
The aging parrot is in full voice.
The doctor says he will never finish
if life is like this
turn of events, the workers of the world
erupting everywhere.

The senora walks out here and walks back.
She has a house to keep up, meals to serve
to the tourists and anthropologists
in Cuetzalan.
She loves it here on top of the mountain.
The doctor needs her simply to get by.
Are you writing your life? she wants to know.

The doctor says he has no life.
Why would he write about nothing
if he only sleeps when he can’t go on . . .
He rarely walks through the jungle
to town, there is always too much to do
and what is not done inhabits his dreams,
his parrot more shrill the darker the night.

(21 February 2011)

copyright 2011 by Floyce Alexander