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Chiapas
My thoughts return to Chiapas
her rain-drenched mountains
and rocky hillsides
where milpas cling, defying gravity
In the mist smoke rises from wood fires
where tortillas cook on comales
blackened with use
I glimpse vibrant huipiles
made by the rough hands of women
who know hard work, hunger,
and uncertainty all too well
Little girls carry their younger siblings
wrapped in rebozos on their backs,
shy with a seriousness beyond their years
I smell the burning incense of copal
rising from ancient altars
while howlers cry high up in the treetops
And in the distance I hear
the faint echoes of an ancient call
crying out for
democracia, justicia y libertad
as the rain continues to fall
over the selva
Rituals
The voices float down from the embankment
Men laughing and talking in spanish and english
Moving with surprising speed along the ditch,
The annual acequia cleaning
I hear them as I clear the overgrown furrows
That will carry water from the mother ditch to these
small rows
Between the lemonbalm and echinacea
Just now showing their first green
The soil in my shovel is wet and heavy
From the recent surprise of spring rain
Replacing the dry packed dirt with mud
I feel a communion with these men
Wielding their shovels in a yearly ritual
That connects us with hundreds of years
Of tending these ditches,
The lifeblood of farmers
Toiling in these small mountain valleys
Of the high New Mexico desert
A place of little rain and much hard work
I feel a connection as well with the turning of the
earth
On its slow course around the sun
Remembering the armfuls of flowers I gathered in
summer
Prickly safflower, mounds of orange and yellow
marigolds,
Rainbow-hued zinnias, oregano in shades of green and
purple
Hung in bundles, row upon row
In September I saw the zinnias blacken and die
With the first frost that settled down near the river
Now the beavers have been cutting trees there
And the river has widened and slowed
Curving in where once there were large cottonwoods
After an unseasonably early warm spell
The change to these cold damp mornings
Makes it hard to leave my bed and venture out
To work the fields,
But I know the earth is rejoicing
Wendy Courtemanche is a nurse and herbalist living in Taos, NM. She has worked in Chiapas, Mexico as a human rights observer and as a teacher of herbal medicine. (July 2004)
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