There is a woman in Sonora, México
who has a voice like cracked adobe.
She stands outside her casita at noon and sings
as loud as her small lungs will let her
into the still bright desert sky.
People think she is completamente loca.

But other people come
and they pay la viejita to sing their words.
She waits until the sun is as far away
from the earth as it will get that day,
when you can hear how bright it is
in a high, dry pitch. She walks onto the sand
y empieza a cantar.

It starts low,
in tone, pace, volume, height
until it grows and her words spiral,
her words rise with the heat,
finding the high winds pushing north,
the winds that blow across the desert
and across the border to the wanting ears
of fathers and brothers working in the north.

And in this way, Mexican women send words on the wind
to their husbands and sons, telling them it is ok,
we will see each other soon, I do love you.

There are prayers and international calling cards,
but there is sand, bright sky, and nopales.
There is Western Union and wanting,
but there is a slow smile buried somewhere in the chest,
memories that wake before dawn
and a shadow that seems to share the work.
There is thirst and la migra,
there are rivers and protection.
There are words that come on the wind
telling them todo está bien, tranquilos, vamos a vernos prontito.

I don’t know any of this
because I have seen it.
I have never given her words
that she could pass to the wind.
I have never met la viejita de Sonora.
I only know her words because at midnight
the desert stars are silent.

Standing outside my house on the border
as a child, at midnight I listened
to the voices that seemed to come from the arroyo
behind my house, Swpanish voices
on the breeze, I heard her sing.

And in the morning the Border Patrol
would fill my nieghborhood, looking
to grab rumours by the neck, pero
se fueron. They would find nothing.

On the border, I decide
if the voices that I hear at midnight
are of inmigrantes in the arroyo behind my house
or if the midnight voices are the words on the wind,
sung by la viejita.

Living on the border, I decide
between legends and laws,
between magic and realism.
I decide
if I believe in sides
or believe in the wind.
If I believe in governments
or believe in people.

I choose people,
I choose the wind,
I choose beginning, not to end.

I choose the songs she sings,
I believe that words are wings,
people have always moved
and borders will be removed.

I choose people,
I choose the wind,
I choose beginning, not to end.
I choose people,
I choose the wind,
I choose the beginning
and I believe it’s us
who will decide how all of this will end.

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