Vida
\/\da My lover is the old poet Gabriel, who lives on a mountain, high above the rest of us—in the place, he says, where sadness makes its nest. Day begins with the first cry of a child, Gabriel writes his laments for an age, then he is stolen by a strangerdressed in black. On nights when the moon lights the way, I climb the rocky hill to his home. He is always at the window, waitingfor me, or for daybreak;I do not ask. When I hold this old man in my arms, his thin body light as bird bones, I feel as if I were warminga woundedsparrow. His gray eyes are darkening. He is writing words for the stone carver. By autumn, I will be gathering flowers for his grave: a basketful of bird-of-paradise, the ones he called in a poem aflock of yeLow-crested cockateels. I will pick flame-of-the-forest, the fire orange blossom he likes to see in my black hair. 88 I will spread these flowers over the square of earth he has chosen: at the point where skytouches ground, and a kapok tree has offered the man shade for half a century. There, he has rested, leaning against the time-smoothed trunk to watch the wild parrots alight at dusk, greening the branches like new leaves; there too, he has listened to their murmurings until the coming of night silenced them. Now he iswaiting to welcome me with wine andflowers. He will take me into his arms and call me Mi Vida: my life, his life. I will stay with him until the sun rises. 89 ...
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