My Santiago

Looking to lavish his love.

This is ‘his world’,

Knowing nothing different

other than this circumference of chain;

Sadder than I can bear to think,

I pat him,

scratch his back, cuddle him,

Then move on,

Trying not to dwell on it.

I sit on my first-floor balcony,

Open an “El Presidente” beer,

And pretend to make an historic

“History will absolve me” speech,

To the ‘masses’ below

as my friends scurry around,

From one momentous ‘bird event’,

to another;

Snapping with wide apertures and long lens.

I stroll the brief distance from our Casa,

And en route am intrigued by two oxen with a young man at the plough,

Hear loud Spanish Rap cannon out of a modest house

and ricochet off the mountains,

See a man stop his tractor

to help a little boy on

in the middle of the thoroughfare -

And acknowledge the calm; this is Soroa at dusk!