For My Father’s Spirit
now your days are spent
you sit at my side and stare
believing your eyes
I write you poems
so many rivers to cross
so the tears won't flow
over the rainbow
is not the place you went to
spirit world's a door
writing in Spanish
childhood's other mother tongue
I don't speak N'dn
en las cantinas
pasabas muchas noches
perdido joven
(in the corner bars
you spent many a night
there you lost your youth)
the last time we spoke
I'd lost my voice to the cold
you got the message
did you go away
just so you could be near me
crying in my ears
raro el día
nubes negras el cielo
yo lloro el sol
(rare the day
black clouds make up the sky
I cry for the sun)
espejo claro
que ves en tu ventana
la infinidad
(clear mirror
what do you see in your window
infinity)
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Odilia Galván Rodríguez, poet, writer, editor, educator, and activist, is the author of six volumes of poetry, her latest, The Nature of Things, a collaboration with Texas photographer, Richard Loya, by Merced College Press 2016. Also, along with the late Francisco X. Alarcón, she edited the award-winning anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, University of Arizona Press, 2016. |
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