Two poems by Luis Lázaro Tijerina

AN INDIAN SUMMER
FOR ANITA O’DAY


Your alluring cat eyes beckon from the dark…
A voice teasing, quick to laugh,
your sensual face still in my heart,
I see your full, red-painted lips
singing to the trees, to the gentle wind
of the romances you lived through
in promising springtime,
only to have your heart broken
in an Indian summer.

Sweeet Georggia Brown,
with your luscious flare,
Sweeet Geroggia Brown with jazzy airs!
You, beautiful jazz lady
casting your spell with your black dress
and wide brimmed hat,
my Stella by Starlight…


A Birch Tree Stands in a Field

A birch tree stands in a field,
its white bark as loose as a girl’s chemise.
All is quiet this day, as it has always been...
Nothing stirs across the river; only the sounds
of distant birds can be heard, as it has always been.
Here, rumors of war or of the laughter of a girl playing,
or someone’s dying in quicksand, is taken
as a matter of course, just like
the river flowing past the birch tree.

A birch tree stands in a field, alone and slightly proud,
like my own life...but what I once valued I have thrown
into the raging waters of the St. Lawrence River.
I think rather of the river that flows here
near the birch in the field..
Sometimes I hear again the great songs
about the 22nd Krasnodar Division who fought
with heroism in the Far-East before I was born,
before the birch tree with its exquisite white bark
singled me out as its friend
I think quietly on this day
about those who will yet die, alone,
near the birch tree.