Conquistadors and Conquerers

Ochre pumice cliffs,
Mexico's humid Pacific rim.
An ocean wave
Grinds floating stones,
Coloured glass,
Sparkling detritus
On the salty metate,
Deserting, abandoning
Memories of centuries.

Dense green flesh
Jungle sweat
Open wound blossoms,
Vermillion and teal and Sun
Yellow and midnight purple
Each coloured bloom an
Annunciation trumpet fanfare,
Time passing; Every
Flower's perfume an
Epitaph on the wind.

Unaware, all the sun-drunk
Lovers lay curled,
Entwined limbs and
Love-stained lips
Whispering eternal
Secrets outward into
The mouth of the sea.

An army of blue-uniformed
Stormclouds advancing
In tight formation
Over the steel Pacific
Gather booty,
Strange and wondrous,
Ideas, feelings, every hue,
Every texture.

The militant skies
Open a deluge
Pour it raging
Into the heart
Of Mexico.
Her soil of souls
Wells up
Blood and tears
In Artesian spirits,
Kahlo, Orozco, Fuentes, Rivera.

Fountains to
Capture divine ichor.
In the walls of the
Casa Azul and reflected
In the Buried Mirror
Oil, ink, cardboard, canvas,
Silence, volcanically majestic.

These relics, this flotsam
Broken loose from ancient
Moorings, washed screaming
Downstream, mingling in
Borderlands of el Norte.

Powerful Northwind eddies
Blown by neighbors and friends
Rockefeller, Getty
Catch tight hold
On strange warm jetsam
Lodging it, welding it
Into Manhattan steel and
Searching for Cibolá,
La Raza is in a wilderness,
Lost in California's Dream.