Confused was I, looking up and down from the news report in my hand,

which seemed to be sourly misinformed about the color of the Mexican spirit.

Missing was the look of distant gazes, robbed of soul and spirit by the

sweet caresses of a steel syringe. Missing was the toothless child,

who like a canvas should be black and blue, whose mother should

be destitute too, a ship whose chipped deck should have known no strangers,

in this small town of San Felipe.

Instead I saw the thick veil of life, sprawled liberally against the buildings

and streets, a metaphysical blueprint of all the worlds cities and my own.

There giggled a pink-faced baby, meeting its match in the crooked

smile of an equally gumless grandfather. There staggered a forlorn lover,

hand on a wall whose other side offered sweet repose to a wide-eyed bride.

And just then, in a flutter of silk between two budding pines, a women lifts

her eyes and drops them on me, and asks in a voice like a crushed rose:

                                             So, what do you see?