A smiling bespectacled Guatemalan woman
covered in a black shroud holds a picture
of the Christ bearing his cross below her bosom.
She stands with many others floating in clouds
of incense above the cobblestone square
outside La Merced,
this grand old yellow church
at the top of colonial Antigua.
They too are dressed in darkness
in the November afternoon. People gather together
to celebrate or to mourn in this small plaza,
(which is not clear at first, perhaps both)
as Christ crucified is lifted high
on Indian shoulders onto the narrow streets
in a slow moody procession which weaves
through the beautiful sunlit town.
Mournful horns like dozens of milky doves
sound their sorrows as believers suffused
with smoky fragrance carry Christ onwards.
Silent crowds grow thick. Men and women,
the old and young, stand in doorways along
this trail of tears, reverent and watchful.
I, the gringo, well, I am sobbing almost uncontrollably
in my private pilgrimage amongst this throng.
A sudden unplanned trip up the steep slopes of Mt. Calvary
may help to grieve the relationship just dead days ago
in the Mayan village of Jaibalito where perched above vast,
azure, surreal Lago de Atitlan and its three looming green
volcanoes, we died, were not buried,
have not been resurrected.
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