Photo by Anitra Thorhaug

San Miguel de Allende Anochecer

The gypsy in the clouds, in scarlet
high-hammering boots, tap-dances down the nails
on her pallid lover’s coffin.
A gray wind-shadow in dark mask and cape
machine-guns his heels towards her, and a green flash
whisks her away swirled in its muleta.
The casket-shaped cathedral throbs to thermal gold.
The lid jacks open.  A skeleton straightens
its Jolly Roger X-bones flickering
to a fluorescent lightbulb with a tick.

Now the lighting of old-style streetlamps.
Tin-helmet sentries pot-shoot the sun’s red dot.
The light retreats to its crimson castle.
The present can’t re-arm or re-provision
so runs a convoy through dusk for just a blink.
Then the queen of remembrance’s charcoal knights
challenge the day with a checkmate resolve
and we’re captured by the dark once more.

The long arm of the moon pokes the ashes
and the paleskin windows break a fever.
If we’d sail to Cathay, no moon to go by,
we’d tiller to the north star’s friendly light.
But this town needs no astrolabe or even
GPS to find out where it’s going,
for its voyage stops before it begins
in a place where the past is all around us
and the night is still silent with stars.