Vacationers at Amecameca
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Vacationers at Amecameca*
A clear focus we wanted, so guidebook guided we left the flowery market to climb the sudden hill remarking the rocky stations of the Indian as Christ,
remarking too the pilgriming, the old signing their Sunday black, the young in white or gaudy as violent rainbows.
From the top, we said, we would see volcanos unclouded, envisioned how their snows would reign in the high sky
but saw in fact only this site
shrine housing him who we guessed once walked this hill with message they accepted and heard preached again by his crystal-tombed cadaver brown as dried leaves rustling in their demise.
The hill we’d read is famous for its view. We came for this but at crest found only relic [End Page 195] whose lore we couldn’t hear and saw only seeming snow of volcanos we knew easterly but could not for clouds see.
Betsy Colquitt, poet and essayist, was born in Fort Worth, Texas. Her books of poems include Honor Card and Other Poems (Saurian Press, 1980) and Eve: From the Autobiography and Other Poems (Texas Christian University Press, 1997).
Footnotes
* Reprinted from Eve—the Autobiography And Other Poems (Fort Worth: TCU P, 1997), courtesy of TCU Press and Betsy Colquitt. [End Page 196]
