Su Nombre, Las Cruces Poem by J. Barrett Wolf

Hearing your name reminds me of crosses
Sunk in the unforgiving dust
Along the road to Santiago
In a country of earth and green cane
They are white…
A lightness I experienced as
your nails taught my skin to beg
tracing along my thigh.

Stacked numerous as rum kegs
along the walls of the distillery
Or solitary as castle towers
These crosses breed a pointless anger
The futile desire that it be another way

You were a horizon of olive skin
Breasts appointed with dark brown stars
That cast need and want like desperate shadows
Through changeable skies.

We lay on the cool redwood porch
Watching meteors cut their temporary tattoos
In the promising night.

The cross…
A symbol of longing –
Immutable mark that responds to both begging and denial
With the same silence, stony and wide as air
Air that has swallowed the smoke
risen from the ash tray
My lips pursed - Your letter gone
From substance to wisp, unread
- The only shrine I could create.

I would swear not to speak ill of such departure.
Recall with favor your soft tongue and eyes.
Fantasizing High Mass, Yizkor, requiems.
Rising to your wise and delicate touch.
Delicious suffering unto wholeness
Basking in a light
As pure and white
As crosses.