Ode to Your Earrings

By Martín Espada                                           For Katherine

There are parrots of the Amazon peeking from your hair.

On your earlobes twin Taino goddesses of the river
squat , their eyes slits, and dream
the cloud of underwater birth.
Here two Zuni dancer bend and breathe
into their flutes;
here float the smallest leaves and pine cones
from Thoreau's sanctuary,
woven on the loom of trees.

Your ears must be the shoreline
of an ocean after the hurricane:
the sea horses of Thailand curl their tails,
brushing your neck;
purple wooden fish flit past,
hiding in the shade of your hand
when you stroke your hair;
the fish of clay hide, too shunned by the others
because their skin is fired earth;
and the silver dolphins somersault
in an arc forged like sickle.

Gold coins pressed from fingers to ears
in the mirror bring a flash
of fingers shoveling the mines.
You keep the plastic pearl earrings
of my grandmother so your hands will know
the Bronx, coffee in a sock on the stove,
the sewing machine's stinger.

One earring lost: dried violets widowed,
turquoise stone in a shield left to tarnish,
peacock feathers painted blue with yellow ears
still searching for a mate,
solitary amethyst,
diminutive lion of wood hunting alone.

But in your ears
you hear the Zuni flute, the branches
shuttling their loom, the dolphin chatter,
a prayer at the wake of the gold miner.
You nod at my grandmother's tranquilidad
de Puerto Rico, serene as the sewing machine at rest.
The goddesses and birds chant in your hair
the recipe for the creation of planets.

Then you stir me from my sleep,
and at night you tell me what you hear.