My Grandmother’s Love Letters

Pray for rain and watch it walk across
the sea, to bless the bare head of the carrion
corbeaux, even the shy agouti, and Maria,
old pirogue left on shore, open casket
at Punta de la Playa. Still, the tide palls
and swells like tildes, changing sound, Nina
to niña, but a ship is not a girl
whose father called to you, Niña! Niña!,
as laughing rain laved what’s too proud.
You could have swiped a slate
from the RC School but that would call
for spit, the leaves of the breadfruit sufficient,
I swear, even for the sighing silk cotton,
the delicate eyes of cows, yes, it is possible
to love where the Admiral berthed, your words
unseen on Valdes’ map, so free to scrawl
your response to a man never to be my abuelo
in Siparia or Güiria, across the invisible bridge
to Venezuela. To touch the scorpion
orchids, the breadfruit branch, all your skin,
ash now, fired down in Town and sent back
to Marac to rain on the galvanize,
soundless as a slow dance in sand.