You remembered everything:
the frozen archangel,
the faces of the ocean,
the skulls of horses.

Your memory is a root,
growing up through this,
our dream. We discover
how cities shine, how fire
heats our homes and bread,
makes candles shorter
and gives shadows to shadows.

Take fresh wheat and knit
a man: the rope already awaits him,
a gallows whose song is green as rain.

Moths fly through windmills
and collect dust on their wings;
the beaches collect shells;
pollen rides on the legs of bees in the fields.

We never imagine the hopelessness
of the scarecrow, stretching his arms wide.

In his heaven and ours, roots grow
in vinegar and drip shadows
for the hangman to follow
and blood makes deserts,
your hands. Things we imagine--stars,
lava, and lightning--keep this scarecrow upright.
Straight as rope.



Copyright © Ramón E. Martinez, 1999.  All Rights Reserved.