Getting into Shape

All night the floor tiles sweat through pores, the water condensing on door

& window glass: we wake to rooms hiding the views we look for.

An orange truck arrives with our coffee: father, son, & a helper unload

gardenias, pomegranate, fig, oregano, iris & lily, species unknown.

We pedal beside vineyards, a coot motionless on her nest, freshly leafed

fruit trees, newly installed street lamps, a road crew & chief.

Today’s goal: El Museo del Vid y Vino, every day a smidgen farther, 

.3km on gravel to paved road, .3 back home, we’re up to 12.5 kilometers.

Where’s the black & orange bird? Might it be a Baltimore oriole

summering in Argentina while Maryland readies for winter cold?

Along the river path trots a shining chestnut mare, nothing on her back, 

rope around her neck, led by an old man on a single-speed bike.

White butterflies, dark hummingbirds, a flock of seven shrieking parrots,

doves that fly up at our approach, competing hawks, & sparrows.

We choose ice cream for our reward: strawberry, mocha, banana

in sugar cones with sips of ice water at the artesanal Heladería on the plaza.

Museo del Vid y Viño, Cafayate

In Hawaii

Hakalau, Hawaii

     In Hawaii . . . we are not at home
to hear & feel the rain
falling. Greens are glowing
though we fail to see.

     We don’t pretend not to miss it.
Remember the smell before
the rain comes? How our pleasure builds
when fog occludes the view?

     Prinked by machines & hired men
the acres sparkle their finest
for buyers dreaming relief

     from mainland gridlock,
urban plunder, their daily commute –
like us, they’re seeking paradise,

     something new.

Cafayate, Salta, Argentina

Waiting

I was packing when my mother died,
on my way from Hawaii
to Amsterdam
but dropping by to see her first.
No one warned me she was nearly gone.

I know nothing about death,
its arrival, its departure, whether she met
death sleeping or awake. They said
she’d stopped eating.
What happened before that?

She tried to be Katherine Hepburn
instead of the fifth of six
girls in a poor Catholic family
far from Boston, badgered by her father
to attend mass,

mostly ignored by her mother
who tired of children
after seven
(one died) but went on
to birth seven more. What brutes

men are. I’m happy my mother defied him
though she went on to marry
a worse one.
We’re so alike in stubbornness
& valor

though we never learned
how not to squabble, how not to lie.
Many nights
she plays in my dreams
always young, vibrant, always taken for granted

because she never left.
Somewhere in some lonesome home
she’s still waiting
for me, I’m still trying
to arrive.

Esther Jones Peters in the 1980s

South American Desert Spring

From the northeast
today the wind orchestrates
the willow dance, urges
birds to choose the strongest, bendiest
twigs for nests, the shiny foil,
cigarette butts, the lengths of cotton
lost from dustcloths, clumps
of dryer lint. Chimangos dive bomb
their competition,
horneros lacquer their mud
ovens, the steady coot
roosts on the dead grass next to the lake
her mate secures from dawn
till moonrise. The buzz
of flies, the whirr of
hummingbirds, the ben-te-ve-o
of benteveos, the shrieks of parrot flocks on
chimney tops, the warning chatter
of burrowing owls
secure the richest season.

Chimango Caracara, Milvago chimango

Hornero, Furnariidae

Benteveo, Pitangus sulfuratus, Great Kiskadee

Pastel

Today at the workers’ café we order
the daily special – Pastel con papa
con ensalada – though we don’t know
the meaning of the word Pastel.

Always, we share one order, plus
un medio de vino tinto. Graciela
tells us an aunt & her two nieces &
someone’s mother cook the food

& also sell frutas y verduras
one door down. Pastel arrives –
potato, ground beef, & potato
topped with cheese, shredded & melted

to a lacy web – Argentine version
of shepherd’s pie, new to Hervé,
aka Yakeen since he lived in India,
who long ago was born French.

Yakeen’s girlfriend regards me
with undisguised suspicion
after learning my name is Carol,
the name of Yakeen’s previous girl,

though I’m ever so old & only today
met Yakeen when he parked his scooter
& crossed the street & surprised us –
Hello, Carol – we met on facebook

thanks to our friend, Jeff, another
expat, all of us far from home
though quite at home, ordering
Pastel & becoming new friends.

Flares

Homeless is who we've become
hearing the desert wind drone.

Sand in our crepey throats, is this the next hard pillow?

On worn hotel sheets beneath a quilted spread
spooning, we lean toward sleep.

Same-name streets guide us to beefy lunches,
salad without the raw onion.

My skin chills in artificial air. I lay my body
on his when afternoon dulls

our fruitless day, his fingers quicken.

Home is where we are, he tongues,
turning me slowly, my scales, my thorns

softening in his hands. We smolder, beacons
fired at early dusk,

the desert blooms.

No Frame Fits

I’m the kind of woman

who meets a man named John who

an hour later says,

“You’re not a normal woman,”

because I said,

“I don’t like talking on the phone.”

He meant it as a compliment.

When Miriam the well-endowed

begins to rant about designers

who put pockets

on woman’s blouses, I say, “Women without tits

like shirt pockets,” but she says

she’s talking about blouses,” & I say,

“I don’t own any blouses.”

When I ruin five more T-shirts

by spilling food down their fronts

I shop the Walmart boys department

for five more – size 14,

bright colors – but here in Cafayate

Walmart’s a 3-hour drive.

I’ll need a new source.

My husband Mike’s the vain one –

shaving, primping his hair, & trimming

his mustache for ten minutes

after I’ve walked past the mirror

without a glance, pulled on the clothes

from the top of the pile, & often enough forgotten

to comb my hair.

Remember Madame Curie

who failed to pamper her skin, Carolyn Chute

who writes novels in flannel shirts,

granny skirts, & shit-kicker boots,

Sinead O’Connor who plumped up &

grew hair – square or round –

no frame fits all women.