Post by LeoVictorBriones (poetremains) on Feb 25, 2008 15:36:01 GMT -5
To Lucia Mora de Briones (1915-2008)
They say ninety-two years is a pretty good run—
born in the midst of a world at war,
born as revolutionary Mexico rocked the Americans
like a sanguine tremor rising from north to south.
You told me more than once how your family got here,
somehow, today, I just can’t remember.
I only have a vague recollection
of what you thought about my Abuelito
the day you met him—
“Que chulo and funny even then,” you said
and then shook your head
as if to say you couldn’t believe you married such a silly man.
It was the house on Kentucky St. that skirted against the Franklins
that I remember most. How it smelled like old El Paso,
the sepia and Polaroid pictures, and all those things you knitted.
How on January 1, 1973
USC beat Ohio State 42-17
in the “GrandDaddy of Them all.”
The Californians cheered the national championship like Hector’s Trojan armies,
You told use to hush, you didn’t want us to offend
Aunt Martha and Uncle Jim from Ohio.
You were always as stubborn as a vacuum-sealed coffee can.
You knew what you wanted. But it was never too complicated—
just to see the city by the bay, the Oz of the west,
one time before you died.
So there we went, all packed up in that old white Impala,
even though my Abuelito warned us that we might not make it,
“This clutch es un poco rado,” he said.
But you just couldn’t help yourself, the Golden Coast called—
the broad smell of salt on the ushering shore and the rolling foam of sea.
It was nearly 6 o’clock by the time we got there,
and the Pacific sunset had begun,
so you could only see the bridge in a silhouette.
And as the Golden Gate of the western sun
parted to it lazy rest, you cried.
Then Abuelito crashed the moment like a porcelain plate to stone,
“Ya estuvo, I can smell the clutch burning.
It can’t take these hills anymore.”
You knew your demand to see Chinatown wouldn’t work,
So we compromised on a hole-in-the-wall
Chinese restaurant below the 101 Freeway
and no where near Chinatown.
We sat and ordered Chop Suey and Won Ton Soup,
asked the cute little Chinese woman
hunched in peasant blue if she knew where the freeway was,
She answered “Feeway? me no know Feeway!”
We returned down the I-5 because, it was easier but not so pretty—
Just flat land, cows, fields of lettuce and walnut trees,
but it three hours faster. That was good because you had had enough—
“Pancho, enough of ‘me no know feeway”, was all you could say.
Years later, when somebody was dying, I think it was Mom’s friend
who we called Auntie Joyce, I cried across the telephone,
“Why would God punish someone so kind?”
You said with fanatic certainty and the peacefulness of morning clouds,
“Our God is a loving God and from Him no evil can come.”
Today I’m think that’s the first and last thing you ever said.
And that’s just fine with me.
Grace to life,
Dust to many mansions.
They say ninety-two years is a pretty good run—
born in the midst of a world at war,
born as revolutionary Mexico rocked the Americans
like a sanguine tremor rising from north to south.
You told me more than once how your family got here,
somehow, today, I just can’t remember.
I only have a vague recollection
of what you thought about my Abuelito
the day you met him—
“Que chulo and funny even then,” you said
and then shook your head
as if to say you couldn’t believe you married such a silly man.
It was the house on Kentucky St. that skirted against the Franklins
that I remember most. How it smelled like old El Paso,
the sepia and Polaroid pictures, and all those things you knitted.
How on January 1, 1973
USC beat Ohio State 42-17
in the “GrandDaddy of Them all.”
The Californians cheered the national championship like Hector’s Trojan armies,
You told use to hush, you didn’t want us to offend
Aunt Martha and Uncle Jim from Ohio.
You were always as stubborn as a vacuum-sealed coffee can.
You knew what you wanted. But it was never too complicated—
just to see the city by the bay, the Oz of the west,
one time before you died.
So there we went, all packed up in that old white Impala,
even though my Abuelito warned us that we might not make it,
“This clutch es un poco rado,” he said.
But you just couldn’t help yourself, the Golden Coast called—
the broad smell of salt on the ushering shore and the rolling foam of sea.
It was nearly 6 o’clock by the time we got there,
and the Pacific sunset had begun,
so you could only see the bridge in a silhouette.
And as the Golden Gate of the western sun
parted to it lazy rest, you cried.
Then Abuelito crashed the moment like a porcelain plate to stone,
“Ya estuvo, I can smell the clutch burning.
It can’t take these hills anymore.”
You knew your demand to see Chinatown wouldn’t work,
So we compromised on a hole-in-the-wall
Chinese restaurant below the 101 Freeway
and no where near Chinatown.
We sat and ordered Chop Suey and Won Ton Soup,
asked the cute little Chinese woman
hunched in peasant blue if she knew where the freeway was,
She answered “Feeway? me no know Feeway!”
We returned down the I-5 because, it was easier but not so pretty—
Just flat land, cows, fields of lettuce and walnut trees,
but it three hours faster. That was good because you had had enough—
“Pancho, enough of ‘me no know feeway”, was all you could say.
Years later, when somebody was dying, I think it was Mom’s friend
who we called Auntie Joyce, I cried across the telephone,
“Why would God punish someone so kind?”
You said with fanatic certainty and the peacefulness of morning clouds,
“Our God is a loving God and from Him no evil can come.”
Today I’m think that’s the first and last thing you ever said.
And that’s just fine with me.
Grace to life,
Dust to many mansions.
