For Praxis class we had to make a final project that
captured how our praxis site impacted us over the semester. For my project, I
wrote a poem about Las Nubes and added pictures of the people I met there.
Las Nubes
In a village with no water
I learned to drink in
The glimmer of an evening
To bathe in the hope of a suffering people
To wash the disenchantment and apathy
From my searching heart
To let the glow of flowers at dusk
Quench my thirst
For beauty
In a world in drought.
In a village where electric lights newly shine
I learned to look for light
In dark places,
To see a hint of dawn
In a new duck pen,
A job at a hardware store,
A small house made of earth.
I found Northern stars in
Unexpected teachers and guides,
Illumination by a single glowing bulb.
In a village where many are illiterate
I learned to read the faces
Of a forgotten people
To find in them
An unwritten history
Of sorrow and resolve
Domination and immense faith.
I received an education on the courage
In unapologetic tears
The injustice of impossible choices
The unshakeable, infectious joy
That lives on in spite of it all.
In a village where women are overlooked
I learned to see the special brand of strength
Of mothers, grandmothers, aunts
Of women who speak, who worry, who survive
To comprehend a new language of love
In a cooked meal, washed laundry, a chastising word.
In realities of oppression
I learned what it is to be liberated.
In a village where few are Catholic
I learned the true meaning of Communion
As I experienced a love so pure
It could have poured itself into bread.
I learned to celebrate Mass with dreams for the future,
Hot chocolate and fried plantains,
To recognize a soul
Feeling its worth.
In a world where people climb to success
The tail feathers of the torogoz
And the vines of the ceiba tree
Like hands reaching down
To the mother earth they have never forgotten
Taught me a lesson in downward mobility.
There in the clouds of the San Salvador volcano
I encountered Las Nubes.
And I will never, ever
Be the same.
