Mexico Saves Daylight

Nobody knows
what this new day
has in store for us.
The colors stolen by night
have not come back yet––
only the string of miniature Chinese lanterns
strung on the patio
glow their soft tones:
lavender, yellow, peach, rose, lime green.
Powered by energy stolen from the sun,
they light up this very early morning darkness
otherwise lit by the random stars of
streetlights undulating over roads that wind up foothills.

The mountain peak named Señor Garcia
stands against the gray predawn sky.
Colima volcano peers over his shoulder,
half-obscured by mist and clouds.
My day emerges.

Scatterings of lights twinkle
from the small pueblos across the lake.
Bats swoop and dart
after the last insects of the night,
then speed impossibly into second-story tejas
for their communal day’s rest.

The hot tub cover,
submerged a few inches beneath the water’s surface,
forms a mirror for the wild hair of palm trees.
Dried leaves rest on the water,
swirling in the breath of morning.
Roosters crow.
A cacophony of bird calls:
“Me hee hee hee hee hee. Me hee hee hee hee hee Me.”
scolds the most persistent of the lot.
Mourning doves answer in a register from another time.
The grind of trucks accelerating on the roadway far below
too small for trucks.
Church bells speak their language,
tolling the morning hour.

The round
subtle drone
of unseen bees
takes precedence
over all other sounds
as I move to the gazebo.
I picture a whole hive
moving to new quarters,
starting that process over again,
busy giving birth to their new home,
perhaps in the stark Guamuchil tree
that survives like a dinosaur
among the castor beans
in the jungled houseless lot next door.

Like one of those internet birthday cards
where an invisible hand
yields a brush
over a black and white drawing,
slowly, colors lost to the black night
emerge through the fog
of earliest morning blues and grays.
Rose pink of the first hint of sunrise.
Colors of houses on the mountains:
vivid orange and gold,
lime green and blue.

Bougainvillea silhouettes give way
to curly detail and bright color:
fuchsia, orange, peach, gold, brilliant white.
Three green foam noodles lie abandoned poolside,
caught in the arms of aloe vera
and by the crown of thorns.
Green washes the hillside
around the gold and brown
of last year’s corn stalks.

The diverse calls of grackles
join the morning conversation.
Quetzacoatl spreads his sinuous frame
over the entire wall above my bedroom doors
as though stretching his kinks out for the day ahead.
7:30 A.M., March 8, 2020,
announces the computer screen
glowing on my bedside table.
Coral sheets and a blue pillowcase.
A large watercolor of a woman
with birds perched on her shoulders
and her hands.
I yearn to go back to bed,
but time changed here
in the very early morning.
It is an hour later
than it was
the same time
yesterday.

Since 2022 marked the last year for Daylight Savings time in Mexico, I’m celebrating by reblogging this poem written on the beginning day of Daylight Savings time in Mexico in 2020–For Reena Saxena’s 2020 Challenge
as well as for dVerse Poets Open Link Night