The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org
by Lee Patton
THE LOST HACIENDA
I thought I was the lost one, pacing a faint track on a volcano's flank, just into the pines, above the manzanita and cactus, the century plants' tight spikes. My slow ascent flipped random pages of the botanic joke book altitude recites to latitude. Tantalizing above treeline, the crater brewed, inside a snowy alp— in tundra, I supposed, Mexican ice laced with lava.
As the trail grew more green, grassy and leaf-strewn under my feet, I knew soon I'd have no new pages to turn, that the trail would decline to be any intruder's guide book and hide its text in vines, underbrush—amid the squawks, the yelps of unseen life, yowls and indecipherable songs. Still, a faint impression, a whisper against the high grass led forward like English phrases scattered among dying native tongues.
Neat as a row of teeth, prickly pear appeared to line the upward route. Aloe spread their spears in clusters, rows fringing a grove of coffee trees. A tile roof asserted between palms— whatever the trail had to say ended at the steps of an abandoned house. Along the windy terrace, pronouncements of family—jungle gym, swing set, plumbed trough for the animals, working spout. Through broken glass I spied a hall scored with clean squares, phantoms of photographs. Encyclopedias stacked, askew as if someone had just sought Volume E., for "Ecologia Tropica." How about Volume Q., for "Que Pasa?"
As if to answer, then not answer, one deck chair seemed turned toward me among a close-knit circle perched above a vista of wild ravines. The vanished family must have coffeed here in the evening, kids' sun-scorched skin salved by aloe. They must have savored conversation, citing Volume E. to season disputes. Here on the volcano's spine in intimate company with doom, they'd spelled the human phrase of reason into vine-tangled ground, their lost words like seeds deep-planted in this howling surround.
Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication
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