My Native One/Mi Indigena – Poem

As evening falls I close my eyes in slumber

Allowing myself to swim this ocean of memories

Chapters of love etched deep upon my being

All bitter sweet or sweet gone bitter

Fleeting passion, friendship adorned in tedium

Tepid nights of sighs quelling loneliness

Reticent reminiscences, specters in empty rooms

A requiem of illusive love defying end

The haunting image of my nameless muse

Spirit veneration of my palindrome poems

A song of truer times breaks the melancholy

Honeyed voice lifts the weight of silence

Solitude blessed by a sweet familiar whisper

    “Cradle your head on the heart of hope;

     sleep and dream my loving touch;

     embrace the promise we exist to keep;

     one day soon we will be forever…”

Poem by Frank de Jesus Acosta*

This poem makes me think of a loss and a future hope.

I imagine a 1940’s sultry blues melody accompanying these lyrics. Which makes the woman appropriate to the poem.

Poetry can metamorphize memories, “All bitter sweet or sweet gone bitter,” into a perspective where we pay homage to the feelings. Somewhat like the Alfred Lord Tennyson phrase:

“Tis better to have loved and lost. Than never to have loved at all.”

For me, the pairing of this art piece and poem illustrates the Mexican concept of death.

In Aztec culture, they believed life on earth to be something of an illusion – death was a positive step forward into a higher level of conscience. Skulls were a positive symbol, not only of death but also of rebirth.

Skulls were a positive symbol, not only of death but also of rebirth.

And it is in the rebirth, that one has hope.

*reprinted with permission by Frank Acosta.