JOY

He who tries to shine

dims his own light.

He who defines himself

can't know who he really is.

The Master does nothing,

yet he leaves nothing undone.

Tao Te Ching

Up before the rested

Up before the rest

In the central park 

Antigua Guatemala

Workmen scrub the fountain

Cloud-covered Volcano Agua 

Oversees operations, sleepy eyes open

Enter the women embroidered in traje

Swaddling babies

American letters to the editor 

From the small town newspaper

On my phone

Mistake

One single minded emotion

Pulses through recycled philippics

These letter mantras decades old

Processions of hatred without circumstance

Hatred

I'd almost forgotten why I left

Yesterday, at the base of the Cerro de la Cruz,

American tourist children were playing

with their newly purchased toy drums and flutes

while their mother complained loudly in English,

"I hate buying water."

What could this mean,

Such jarring thoughts

Even if it's only a word

Injecting hurt into a beautiful morning?

Invoking hate?

Hatred for water?

Hatred of spending money?

Complaining is the job of tourists.

Eduardo guided me through the jungle, 

Day after day after day after day after day

At times eight hours, walking

In heat that turned my clothes 

To sopping sponges

Without complaining, Eduardo called some tourists

"Delicado" because he is

The soul of patience

Last night on a motor bike

Through the streets of Antigua

Three days ago

In indigenous Rabinal

Where the dead are remembered

The dead and disappeared from the wars

Sponsored by guns from Ronald Reagan

Their pictures, their names, filling the walls of a museum

Without a tourist in sight for miles around

But no one mentions hate

Even here

The garden where I sit

Rocking in a hammock

Watching birds of blue and orange and red

Gnaw on bananas

Talking with those who speak neither Spanish nor English

Why am I here?

To bear witness.

To exorcize the demons of the north

With my absence from the arguments.

To haunt with prayers from the Maya

And incense in the streets

To fulfill my forty-years of meditation

I need more notches in my belt

I shrink, gladly

I sit atop the world's largest pyramid

Still half hidden in the jungle

Listening to howler monkeys shriek against

The setting sun

The wizardry I dreamed of as a boy

Has a chance of coming true

There is nothing to resist, this way

The argument dies

Falling unheard in the forest

Someday I will tell this story

Today I walk the cobbled streets with Lee

Without care