wandering in oaxaca

wandering in oaxaca a photograph
of yosemite lies crumpled in the pocket of a nurse
who wraps the wind around her mamacita’s neck.

the nurse warms the wind so it won’t remind her of the sea, or 
the time when horses were some other animal
changing slowly into long-lost

street musicians who cry and holler at the hollow sky
until all the couples tie themselves in knots,
ancient and silent, lost men and women 

coated with oil that seeps from a symphony
in the park, before it was written on all the leaves, 
fill a cup, smear it

​on a telescope lens and see 
an asteroid aiming carefully at
a wet and glistening shell in the sand.