Early Sorrow
by Fern Trujillo
—after Elizabeth Bishop
At dusk on the covered porch a family
fills themselves with drink and laughter
that stretches into mother
night yawning with the stars of the desert,
and Tía Vera, a bit touched
by the alcohol, does her dance beneath the moon
and how very full and bright the moon
seems, so as to almost be family.
Is this the night the boy is touched
by fall leaves swaying in the wind’s laughter,
consumed by the vastness of the desert,
his second mother—
his first mother
flesh, his step-mother the humming moon
as urchin dogs howl through the desert
and cumbias blare while a family
dances, murmurations of drunken laughter
reverberating, the boy wandering a little touched.
Is this the night the boy is touched,
what will his mother
say through his tías’ laughter
under the eyes of the ever more red moon?
Slowly into the darkness a family
departs across lands, each to their desert
home. The Jews for 40 years wandered the desert
and went so long without being touched
by God—is God here on this night in this family
of hard-bitten women, the boy’s mother
stricken into silence under the burning moon
who is finished with her laughter
like the tías are done with their laughter
in the inscrutable desert
lit by the lidless tears of the moon
that fall on the boy the night he was touched,
his mother
humming of family.
Crucible moon, blood-touched
thorn-pricked laughter—the desert,
and a mother, and a family.