—after Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrenda
For John Oliver Simon
palms up, holding the sign of the letter K,
cupped hands to drink from the spring.
Or a gift of letters etched on the farthest shore.
I have nothing to give but these empty shells
of words, unvarnished, dressed in sheepskin
and stardust at twilight. A distant congress
of ravens deep in primeval forests, where
forgotten totems still dream of the ancestors.
Te amo, he once said, long ago.
If I could, I would offer you these old hiking boots
& socks, once shot through with silver and dawn light,
that once took us to the heights of Machu Picchu.
We’d go back to the lowest place on this continent,
to where the pupfish still swim in Salt Creek.
We’d revisit the umbligo of Death Valley, where the spirit level
seeks equilibrium with the lofty heights, that wilderness
of spires that puncture the blueness of the sky.
Yo también, I answered.
In this wilderness where we are only visitors,
where life is insignificant, a sliver of the past,
where memory sleeps, then reinvents itself
when we scry our unborn poems on the lake
that offers them up to the wind. Small sacrifices.
I have nothing left to give you except these worn words,
so like hummingbirds building nests of spiderwebs,
hope, and thistle-down over Palo Verde Creek.
These words still seeking an audience with your ear.
Remember,
I will always love you, said the darkness.
Te amo, mi amor, I said.
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