Tryst Over Puerta Vallarta

"I want the light locked inside to awaken."

                     Pablo Neruda, Las Piedras del Cielo

Puerta Vallarta quivers slightly under the opal light of dawn

as women loosebutton shirtwaist dresses in floral prints

around their hips, disentangle errant black strands

from gilded nut brown earlobes.

Men at chipped formica tables mound black beans and rice

onto sweet corn tortillas, fold them over once before

slipping frayedged brick and mortar-stained teeshirts on

their hats beside the door, maize yellow.

Atop the building across the street one workman sings

with a small radio in front of an Aztec sea and intoxicated by

the fragrance of roses, perhaps, or the red sweater

against his wife’s auroral skin, he nets both laughing

wife and cooing baby in a spontaneous samba.

Neli Moody