LA LLORONA’S SACRED WATERS
Acrylic mural on stucco, 30’ x 70’
York and 24th Streets, San Francisco Mission District
Juana Alicia ©2004
La llorona’s sacred waters
she holds us in the wing of her arm and
all we hear at the edge of the world is
las ranas crying perdiendo se gana
perdiendo se gana perdiendo se…
for our survival she throws us into the
watery vortex were we are hurled
left to swirl down to where we all
began and return again in the ancestor’s
children’s children’s children
sometimes
a desperate mother
must return herself
her children
to the blue void
where the waters
are not still
nor rushing but
a soothing place
to rock her
babies back
to the big sleep
their souls to keep
to plant them as seeds
once again
in a watery tomb
the universal womb
from where all life springs
a better place
without suffering
no longer sought in a cruel
world who cares not
about future
generations
merely wants
to use them
as tools
to rule them
for their own
motives
money or profit
we come in tiny little writhing drops
in a sea of blue darkness swimming up
a perilous canal a life journey not to be
stopped then a half of us must penetrate the
luminous calabash of life
to become whole a higher form of life
then swimming semi-conscious
in a briny stew in the curve of
our mother’s bright red womb
until we are done
then we emerge spurting and stopping
causing her much pain at the same time joy and
confusion
for that first communion nine months
earlier resulted in an us
a new flower blooming red
in a gush of sacred water flowing out
to greet the world once again
© Odilia Galván Rodríguez, 2002
Berkeley, Califas.
