What could be more exotic than orchids, these lilac stars
growing from a wall in Morelia, where skyrocket junipers bar a vacant sky?
One more place to come to like fugitives
off a DC-10, down the rolling stairs and onto the macadam, at night, holding
our children asleep in our arms. Grief and rain—
how easily they find us, we find them—together, their translucent bodies
in one grave we come to visit, and to inscribe
our names in the water. Passing the cathedral,
our bus driver crosses himself, as does the woman sitting next to me—
her beautiful legs, her blue skirt and jacket
somehow more
beautiful in this rote devotion, how she kisses
the hand she crosses.
--David Swerdlow, 2004