Rocio's Grandfather Up in a Tree, 1929

He was a burning bush of a man,
always bursting in flame, an ancient letter
in a unwritten book on the power of joy
in the face of stultifying catastrophe.
Spain was a rock face crumbling;
all the men had to find new ways
to make themselves useful. Women
were left to re-sing the old laws.
The children whited themselves out
with a brush. No one remembers the man
standing under our man in the tree,
hombre arbol. Some say he never existed,
an angel airbrushing itself into a photo.
The date 1929, the caption blank, the sun
either just coming up or one last time
throwing itself across the horizon line.
Rocio’s grandfather keeps his balance
by fingertipping buds, hat threatening
to fly off—the wind an elixir he drinks
openmouthed and shouting.