Poetry Explication

XVII

I love the wind when it blows through my barrio. It hisses its snake love down calles de polvo, and cracks egg-shell skins of abandoned homes. Stray dogs find shelter along the river, where great cottonwoods rattle like old covered wagons, stuck in stagnant waterholes. Days when the wind blows full of sand and grit, men and women make decisions that change their whole lives. Windy days in the barrio give birth to divorce papers and squalling separation. The wind tells us what others refuse to tell us, informing men and women of a secret, that they move away to hide from.

* * * *

by Jimmy Santiago Baca