Snapshots of a place and time

Vai passando muito tempo sem nova postagem.
Para não deixar os dias passar assim, "em branco" -- na verdade, não,
mas outros trabalhos têm tomado muito meu tempo -
decidi postar hoje este pequeno texto,
"work-in-progress" que comecei a escrever ao sair de
uma exposição de fotos à que tinha entrado, um dia,
por acaso, num passeio pelas Ramblas...)


A blue dress hanging on the cottage porch
Small fingers of a girl pushing back her hair,
Adjusting her barrette
Rows of cinderblock apartments, and inside –
a fragile dining table covered with plastic,
a stunned grandchild looking out the window.
Perhaps his green eyes follow the road winding out,
An intuition that somewhere something else
Might happen. On the tv, there are layers of
Snow covering highways and train tracks
And a warm place where buildings crumbled at dawn
Under the terrible tremors of the earth
(And now no water. No mouthfuls of rice or potato.)
Or perhaps what he sees is a still time, the uncertainty
Of change, the tedious repetition of childhood hours
with nowhere to go beyond the rusty playground
of a dusty vila -
A small blue bicycle left to its busted wheel.

Walking out into the lights of this port city, i am reminded
how lives can be different. Tonight there is fresh snow on the
ground,
children calling from back home where it is summer,
where people prepare for another season and its endless
rainfall. Passerbys pushing like thick traffic.
Choices stretching out in all directions like too many
corners to turn. Mistakes that can still be
Rectified.