DESERT SONGS : North Mexico Corridos

Northern Mexico’s landscapes sing to my spirit – the mountains and canyons, the desert …

Sitting out on a verandah, watching the light pass across the mountains and the desert. Watching the lizards and roadrunners, the saguaro and nopales from the window of a train, hitching into the depths of Copper Canyon – so many adventures inspiring poems and narratives.

In this latest addition to the Latin America Wanderer eBook Library, I present to you five poems of this breathtaking, spirit-touching region of Mexico. In this collection, we sojourn from the slopes of Nevado de Toluca mountain to San Luis Potosí and northward, observing and listening to the desert (Trickster Songs). In San Fernando, I awaken to a desert dawn (All Night the Rain Fell).

Our final stops are to Copper Canyon (Barrancas de Cobre), one of the largest canyon systems in the world (and said to be five times deeper than the US’ Grand Canyon). In the village of Creel on the rim of the canyon, we stroll to the main plaza where Rarámuri women sell their artesanía (New Born).  Then I invite you to hitch with me from there into the tropical depths of the Barrancas de Cobre (Canyon Winds).

And until next month when I place another acquisition into the Library …

Safe Journeys!

º

---

---

º

For more Mexican Adventures,

check out these other volumes in the

Latin America Wanderer eBook Library!

 

 

 

CARNAVAL’S MORN

Amapala, Isla El Tigre (Honduras) in the Golfo de Fonseca between Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. photo Lorraine Caputo

I am awakened by an explosion & a faint flash of orange light.

& the successive blast of rocket after rocket shakes these four-a.m. streets. Gunpowder smoke drifts down the main avenue towards the pier.

Nearby, at a makeshift stall, men sit drinking beers. They yell in English at this foreign lady up on the hotel balcony of termite-gnawed wood.

She ignores them. A weak shaft of light shines out from her room.

The stall owner sprawls in her chair. Her blue dress stretches across splayed knees. Her closed-eye head rests on an upturned hand.

Cumbias flow from a jam box, gentle wash of waves behind them.

After the last reverberation of the last rocket fades, a marimba begins playing up in that central park.

~      ~     ~

Several hours later, morning dusk washes over the gulf, the islands, the shoreline. The rose-colored full moon fades.

On the corner of the pier avenue & Calle Marina, a person lies stretched in a hammock strung under a palm-thatched porch, unawakened, unmoved by the loud voices of those men who are still drinking.

A couple hurries down that long pier to where others await a panga for the mainland.

Soon one leaves riding deep in the leaden water. The buzz of the outboard motor fades with its distance.

Twittering birdsong fills the sparse-scattered trees.

The distant landscapes clear.

º

º

published in:

Synchronized Chaos (mid-June 2023)