The Mexican Guarache

The Mexican Guarache was already underfoot
in 1856 when my great-grandfather
crossed the dry Rio Bravo

in that year of the great drought
when even stones were dying of thirst.
With the Mexican Guarache my grandfather

trekked from town to town
looking for jobs in sawmills,
cotton gins, meat markets,

you see, not all my ancestors
harvested the fields for the white man.
The Mexican Guarache spirited my father

to the mountainous skies of California
forsaking his children to work on motors,
transmissions, axles, turn signals.

And the Mexican Guarache has not let me down either,
carrying me on its back
through the sharp words that litter the land.