IT MAKES SENSE TO ME NOW
by Jimmy Santiago Baca
That evening
I drove down from San Francisco to Los Angeles
and dropped in to visit Luis,
who told me:
It’s your turn to carry the torch.
Years later
the significance of those words
flared like a stick-match in the dark
the day Paz gave me a painting
of Nahuatl Dancers
tethered by the ankles, who fly
around the pole.
The lead Dancer, El Maestro, stands on top:
he’s back from visiting the sun,
bearing a message for us on earth.
At dawn
I make my way downstairs
to make coffee, nodding
my respects to El Maestro:
bunches of flowers on his hat
yellow/red/green/blue headband tassels
ribbon out in wind.
He beats a small drum and blows his flute,
a single eagle flaps by clouds behind him
as he balances on the pole;
the reddening, orange-gold sky ablaze with light.
I wonder what his message is
and how it pertains to me.
Now
I drive twice a week to San Jose barrio
volunteering to teach reading and writing,
and I remember
one evening
I asked the children and parents to write a letter poem
describing their journey to America:
risking lives, homes burned, fleeing death squads
after husbands and brothers were murdered,
the women raped. I’ll never forget
when
this little girl, too shy to read aloud
her praise and love for her mother,
had me sit on the floor next to her
as she stood on a makeshift stage
in a bookstore. When she uttered that first word
a glint of light sparked across her brown eyes
into the world, as if it were golden
speech without sound. I sat amazed
at the light in her eyes, igniting a memory in me—
when
I too recited my first poem. The intensity and
radiance of
a child reaffirmed my original reason for writing,
one I’d forgotten along the way.
Suddenly
I knew, keeping the light intact,
teaching writing, not to mold or direct,
just to keep it burning, blowing on the embers
so hope doesn’t go out,
that was the message El Maestro was bringing me
from the sun.
from Singing at the Gates, by Jimmy Santiago Baca
Photos: Wikipedia and Juan Pablo Contrera
