©Mazatlan
in October
Mimi
Wolske, November 2014
Mimi
Wolske-Mona Arizona™
All
Rights Reserved
I love
the way your fingers
have a
discussion with my skin.
The
sun turns and we enjoy
the
welcoming languor of
a
hundred indecisions
below
the Tropic of Cancer.
Your
arm rests on the flank of my body,
your
fingers tease with silent words
where
the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific.
You say,
the sun is always high here
because
the earth is tilted,
and
still we bask in the sun —
which
doesn't seem warmer
than
the sun of Arizona —
lost
in the people maze
on the
white sands of Mazatlan.
Impatient
birds of prey, amorous and ready to devour
each
other, we steal kisses that cannot quench the
thirst
of our desire here in the Pearl of the
Pacific.
We linger,
sigh, and think
where
should we walk today?
Drawn
by yellow-spires,
we find
ourselves at the
Basilica
of the Immaculate Conception.
Blue
and yellow Moorish motifs
on the
outside
stand
out even more
in
what is called Old Town.
We
enter; we're awed by the gilded,
hand-carved,
baroque triple altar,
the Renaissance
domes,
Mazatlan's
patron saint
the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,
and
the Virgin of Guadelupe.
We
say, it's something to tell
children
and grandchildren.
You
take my hand and we step
back
into the sixteenth century
in
this trope of forbidden love,
this
damsel and her knight
strolling
the cobblestone streets of Copala;
we stand
at the foothills of the Sierra Madre —
twenty-three point five degrees North of the equator.
Your praise my eyes;I reach up and press my lips
to your smiling lips robed in the light of the setting sun.
Sharing coconut milk with strawberries
on a different soil, in a different climate,
at the northern edge of the Tropics,
we sip and appreciate
the years of shared lust
and thank God it never turned
into ashes or dust here in
the most important,
the most beautiful,
the most turbulent,
the most endangered,
and the most violent
region on our side of the world.
(drawing:
Lovers Embrace by Shele Cox)
