(audio read, by the author)
Turn left on Amado Nervo Avenida. Avoid the orange dogs.
The one I call Tuffy, with the scar down his nose, needs extra love. A rough junkyard scrapper, not sure why he’s relocated over here, he used to be the One To Avoid on the road to the shore.
I’m not in the mood today. I’ll bring him extras on Wini Wednesday. The day when I toss winis out of the window of the car so the unknown to me street dogs don’t associate me with the franks. I already can’t walk through town alone. I don’t mind really, but if I go to the tienda, they wait outside under a lone tree and 7,8,9 the group.
It can be chaotic in a commercial area. Air quotes implied on commercial, but it’s where there are two food stores a pharmacy and occasionally a hardware store.
It’s too hot in July and August to walk dogs in this dusty town after 7am. I round the corner and there is Jesus with a ski mask ninja thing Balaclava or Sheisty as hood rats call them…he says it’s to keep the sun off his face to be handsome, forever. A former sicario he worked for the Governor but was thrown under the bus for running arms and incarcerated for 14 years where he learned nothing.
“Hey, did you cremate your dog?”
Such an awkward lunatic. With no context, and yes RIP, buenos dias it was three weeks ago I don’t want to repick that scab right now. Yea, well she died first.
Do you have the ashes?
Yes, who told you?
I don’t remember. Did you cry a lot. They said you cried a lot.
The entire population of this pueblo is like talking to toddlers in 50 year old bodies. The women are reincarnated cats. The men are babies in old cowboy bodies.
Also the summer brings flies. Buzzing around my face, I decide to keep walking, so many reasons not to be outside having this conversation. Ironic that I live on the street named after a poet, I have very few conversations that aren’t coarse. Buen dia, I wave.
Amado Nervo a Mexican poet and diplomat died young, at 48, in 1919. He’s laid to rest in the Rotunda of Illustrious People in Mexico City. One of his better known poems, At Peace, was written a couple years after his wife suddenly died, and 4 years before his death. With a corazon roto, he penned:
Very near my sunset, I bless you, Life
because you never gave me neither unfilled hope
nor unfair work, nor undeserved sorrow.
Because I see at the end of my rough way
that I was the architect of my own destiny
and if I extracted the sweetness or the bitterness of things
it was because I put the sweetness or the bitterness in them
when I planted rose bushes I always harvested roses
Certainly, winter is going to follow my youth
But you didn’t tell me that May was eternal
I found without a doubt long my nights of pain
But you didn’t promise me only good nights
And in exchange I had some peaceful ones
I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face
Life, you owe me nothing, Life, we are at peace!
Written on March 20, 1915.
Amado Nervo, Tepic, Nayarit
The poem is beautiful! "I loved, I was loved, the sun caressed my face." Must remember to plant more rose bushes. Thanks for sharing it, and your thoughts, as always.