After three decades of civil war
a treaty is signed so armies
might stop murdering one
another and native people.

We rent an old four-by-four 
to travel into the remote mountains  
of Nebaj and other outposts we longed 
to visit since the music of their names 
and history first filled our ears.
  
On the way, we give a “to-market” ride 
to a young Maya mother and then stop
for a hillside rest above wild country
with her to share apples, cheese and crackers. 

she gestures down the slope to a roofless
fire-ruined home and whispers ”The War” ... 
but then looking past that pain,
she speaks brightly of her children … as if 
the genocide against her people never happened. 

Picnicking in the shadow of a civil war 
seems somehow insane but when I ask her about 
the future, she chirps happily that the newly paved 
road to her village means better teachers 
may come to their schools and to her daughters. 

The apples taste sweeter.

West of Nebaj above Rio Negro, Guatemala 1996
                        

A Panchoy valley specialty — 
	sagging doors on antique iron hinges
	topped with drooping barbed wire,
	bottoms agape, raw-boned,
	for street-smart dogs to pass.

The abandoned homes behind each door
	are now cavernous skulls where weather
	pours through split roofs and eddies 
	in dank rooms. Rainwater bleeds across
	dirt thresholds onto cobbled streets.

Doors are draped with chains rusted dark ochre 
	and iron latches that no longer open.
	Padlocks swing in tropical winds
	carving arcs in weathered wood
	adorned with artful oxide streaks 
            
Lonely ghosts amid thick weeds squint out
	the sockets of boarded-over windows.
	Tourists photograph the wooden doors,
	for in frailty they are as beautiful 
	and serene as the quiet old gents 
	chatting in the city park down the way.

Antigua, Guatemala 1988