Gary Soto

The clouds shouldered a path up the mountains East of Ocampo, and then descended, Scraping their bellies gray on the cracked shingles of slate. They entered the valley, and passed the roads that went Trackless, the houses blown open, their cellars creaking And lined with the bottles that held their breath for years. They passed the fields where the trees dried thin as hat racks And the plow’s tooth bit the earth for what endured. But what continued were the wind that plucked the birds spineless And the young who left with a few seeds in each pocket, Their belts tightened on the fifth notch of hunger— Under the sky that deafened from listening for rain.

There is the one who turns A spoon over like a letter, Reading the teeth-marks Older than his own; The one who strikes a match, Its light flowering In his eyes, The smoke in his throat; The one who opens the mouth Of a dog to listen To the sea, white-tipped And blind, feel its way to shore. At night They walk in the streets, The dust skirting their legs Raw with lice And the wind funneled Through a doorway Where someone might pray For a loaf of good luck. * Somewhere the old follow Their canes down A street where the front Pages of a newspaper Scuttle faceless And the three-legged dog hops home. A door is locked twice And flies ladder a scale of fish. Somewhere a window yellows From a lantern. A child With fever, swabbed in oils And mint, his face Spotted like an egg, His cry no different Than the cry That shakes the trees lean. A candle is lit for the dead Two worlds ahead of us all.

Because there are avenues Of traffic lights, a phone book Of brothers and lawyers, Why should you think your purse Will not be tugged from your arm Or the screen door Will remain latched Against the man Who hugs and kisses His pillow In the corridor of loneliness? There is a window of light A sprinkler turning As the earth turns, And you do not think of the hills And of the splintered wrists it takes To give you The heat rising toward the ceiling. You expect your daughter To be at the door any moment And your husband to arrive With the night That is suddenly all around. You expect the stove to burst A collar of fire When you want it, The siamese cats To move against your legs, purring. But remember this: Because blood revolves from one lung to the next, Why think it will After tonight?