Fields

Grandpa Rodriguez was a stargazer. An observational astronomer. Un cosmólogo de campo who slept in a toolshed in the lettuce fields of California, the potato fields of Colorado. El viejo tech de madera invited the Milky Way to peek through its cracks at midnight. My grandfather, I imagine, while lying on his bed of hay, would contemplate the constellations. Admire Cuauhtli’s celestial wings and dream of flying away. When he would tell me these stories, I swear I could smell pesticides on his breath.

My grandfather was a campesino. A migrant farmworker. He toiled in soiled clothing, bent in the heat of an unforgiving sun tending to a pregnant earth. Callused hands and a tender heart. The Mexica taught us that our current age, the Fifth Sun, would only be birthed by self-sacrifice. By Self-immolation. In some ways, I guess, I too am a Fifth Sun. My grandfather leaped into the sun so that I could dig my hands into the soil of my family history, and instead of lettuce, harvest these words.