EL Nino in capricious mood had made

A desert, bare as moonscape, and life-springs fade

On the Altiplano

The hills and valleys once alive and green

Are now gray dust; no flower, no plant is seen

On the Altiplano

Some, hopeless, leave the only home they’ve known

To vanish, like sand, scattered, wind-blown

On the Altiplano

And leave behind the few who choose to stay.

At night, they dream the past: sweet falling rains.

At dawn, with heavy hearts, see drought-dead plains

Still on the Altiplano

On the Altiplano the hungry children cry;

Death stalks the barren fields as their world grows dry.

Oh, pray for those of the Altiplano

Pray, friends,

That soon the rains will come

So hunger ends

On the Altiplano

Soft footsteps running

Giggles of pure happiness

Welcome lights in the eyes

Can melt the hardest heart.

How can I explain my heart

When my child runs across

To throw herself headlong

Into my open waiting arms.

No purer love exists than

The love of a child for her mother.

Where did I lose the wonder,

That wonder in my child’s eyes?

For Phillippa Berlyn

(Upon reading “Hills of Inyanga,” POET Magazine, 1967)

From over the mountains

Of a far-off land

Hills of Inyanga call

Across the world,

Beyond the seas,

The hungry hills call to me,

Their mysteries borne

Through the night

And fog of distance

Between the sound of the horn

And the light of the beacon

#Phillippa Berlyn #Inyanga #POETMagazine

Strange were the hands that made them

in the brooding sun-gold realm:

secrets of an ancient time

so silent still in slumber

on the dry and windless plains,

age-old forgotten symbols

by life and ghosts abandoned.

Are there watchers in the skies?

Do they see us wake from dreams

and mark with hope the wonder

that we might now remember

time-travelers of the past?

“Wait,” they somehow seem to say.

“Wait. We will come back some day.”

#NascaPlains #NascaLines #Geoglyph #PeruAndAliens

One day El viejo came from the land where the sun goes down

And now he relives his fabulous roams, south of the border town.

On sun-baked patio stones los niños gather to hear

Him tell of those wonder-filled days (his burro waits patiently near)

His sombrero shadows his brow, but, dream-filled, the old eyes glow

With gnarled brown finger at lips, he signals: Silencio!

Los niños grow still as the stones; no sound but the fountain’s play

Breathless they wait for the tales El viejo will tell them this day

Their eyes are lustrous and dark, like pebbles in a stream

Unnoticed paloma flies over los niños caught up in their dream

Los niños are carried away to far-off mesas and skies

To the place where the sun goes down and the land where new moons rise

Where montañas touch and the clouds and trees soar green and tall

They learn of the niños there, and they yearn to know them all

El viejo had traveled far, to the land where the sun goes down

And now he re-dreams those days, south of the border town.

#Storytelling  #HispanicCulture