Mazatlan in October

a poem about lovers under the Tropic of Cancer...in Mazatlan, Mexico

©Mazatlan in October

Mimi Wolske, November 2014

Mimi Wolske-Mona Arizona™

All Rights Reserved

I love the way your fingers

have a discussion with my skin.

The sun turns and we enjoy

the welcoming languor of

a hundred indecisions

below the Tropic of Cancer.

Your arm rests on the flank of my body,

your fingers tease with silent words

where the Sea of Cortez meets the Pacific.

You say, the sun is always high here

because the earth is tilted,

and still we bask in the sun �"

which doesn't seem warmer

than the sun of Arizona �"

lost in the people maze

on the white sands of Mazatlan.

 

Impatient birds of prey, amorous and ready to devour

each other, we steal kisses that cannot quench the

thirst of our desire here in the Pearl of the Pacific.

 

We linger, sigh, and think

where should we walk today?

Drawn by yellow-spires,

we find ourselves at the

Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.

Blue and yellow Moorish motifs

on the outside

stand out even more

in what is called Old Town.

We enter; we're awed by the gilded,

hand-carved, baroque triple altar,

the Renaissance domes,

Mazatlan's patron saint

the  Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,

and the Virgin of Guadelupe.

We say, it's something to tell

children and grandchildren.

 

You take my hand and we step

back into the sixteenth century

in this trope of forbidden love,

this damsel and her knight

strolling the cobblestone streets of Copala;

we stand at the foothills of the Sierra Madre �"

twenty-three point five degrees North of the equator.

 

You praise my eyes; I reach up and press my lips

to your smiling lips robed in the light of the setting sun.

 

Sharing coconut milk with strawberries

on a different soil, in a different climate,

at the northern edge of the Tropics,

we sip and appreciate

the years of shared lust

and thank God it never turned

into ashes or dust here in

the most important,

the most beautiful,

the most turbulent,

the most endangered,

and the most violent

region on our side of the world.

 
(drawing: Lovers Embrace by Shele Cox)