Zapotecs are the indigenous people of Tehuantepec; over 400,000
speakers of the language call themselves The people of the clouds,

the first to wonder if there might be time anywhere else? Warm air
rises and translates into an eruption of summer skies. Do we also lift

to rain down and live again, slipstream on silent wings of cranes
and set down elsewhere? I hope not to die in the silence of dreams

without orchids or the music of the arpa grande, the sky moving in
low from the west, clouding over, some roses taking the last steps

toward autumn, toward memory and each of its bruised, magenta
petals . . . toward evening and the husks of stars we will become.