Adiós

Adiós to the dumb

straightforwardness of adobe

Beneath scant whitewash

 

you are horseshit—

compressed turds & straw

an ancient nose thumbed

 

against the heat of endless days

Adiós to the preponderance  the invincibility

the recklessness of forsythia

 

A trillion similes ago

someone harnessed you

with what they mistook

 

for desperate innovation:

like a wild & golden hair

plummeting down my lover’s pliant spine

 

they wrote

Adiós to the tenacious

striated black butterflies

 

nearly a full notch

above mothy aggravation

While I am not entirely fluent

 

in microscopic tongues

I spot you there

on the burly thistle & bendy fern

 

Screw them & their orange world

those monarchs & sons of monarchs

I hear you bawling

 

what has become of subtle utility?

Adiós to the patas chicas

the little paws

 

descendants of the Olmecs

the Aztecs  the Tarahumara

how I would go unshod

 

& disfiguringly calloused

in your land of miniature shoes

& outright disdain

 

Adiós to my days of pumping  siphoning

hauling  shifting  purifying

storing & rationing water

 

In Mexico dear partner

one learns

abundance is a virtue

 

The rest is a quaint morality—

to which one can easily say

adiós  adiós  adiós