Every afternoon, I followed the scarred dirt road
rutted and dry, or else water-logged, thick with frogs,
an eighth of a mile from my front porch
past the houses of my neighbors
(and his house, the one for whom I left)
until the road turned right and became a trail.

I crossed the stream, water supply of the village,
where the trail began to climb and became La Culabra.
La Culabra: wilderness behind my house.

I memorized that trail like the ridges of my own dry heart
I have no photographs but memories
of greeting Justa, Marlon, y Marí, breastfeeding her newborn as she climbed
The men with machetes, sometimes drunk.
Buenas tardes, I would sternly tell them, trying to glare them off from any ill intentions.
I love you, they would say back in English
Once I came across one in a fetal-position in the middle of the trail;
he was fast asleep.

The rising trail offered a topographical look at the village,
the Great Rubber Tree marking one of many forks.
My favorite wandering place in those mountains had a view like the Rockies
shale rock, the river below, miles of sky.
I would steal away there and cry, sing, pray, sit in silence
until the light was almost gone and it was time to stumble down the mountain in the twilight.

Well I have hiked four times this week, and I am grateful for the steep, quick paths; the wildflowers and vista rewards,
the familiar land of my birth.

But it is nothing like La Culabra.

And I miss La Venta, the earth, the students I dream of nightly, the warmth of a language and a body next to mine
and I grieve the separation and loss of this 23rd year.