white hands direct
brown hands into tierra madre
teaching??? >>> mexican farmworkers >>> to farm?
to germinate life into earth
to use tek tools? made in china tools?
teach farming?
to a people who before time was time
germinated and joyously harvested
a culture from earth’s deep and generous love?
in public you, teacher-farmer, say
“i work with the oaxacans”
“i work with the meXicans”
“i learn them to farm”
my thoughts ger << mi >> nate >> d
perhaps farmer-teachers
you should notice
oaxacans meXicanos eternally patient
>>> work with you
trying to indigenous-learn you
about SACRED mother earth
all the while YOU plunge man-made, un-organic seeds of commercialized ideas
into your-so-called farming farmer’s teacher’s heart > > > > facade
knowing it is brown hands “learning” that facilitate the grants and profits
of your profit-less non-profit
germinate? germinate?
TRY to germinate truth into your identity as farmer-teachers
we, farmworkers, were farming long before you called it farming
long before you germinated a farming in dus try
AND MOTHER EARTH TO STARTED TO DIE
c angelica guillen, 2000
GERMINATE?
Note: I saw a photo of a local mexican woman holding in her arms a basket of vegetables she had harvested, beside her stood her teacher farmer who was teaching her to farm. La mujer meXicana was smiling sweet while her eyes were stone cold in defeat. When the teacher-farmer was asked about what she was doing, she responded that she was germinating future farmers. This poem is for the Mexican woman who was being “taught” how to farm.
we are each other
we reside
in borderless cosmos
how much love can we deny?
how much hate can we hide behind?
I move in careful steps toward you
you move to make yourself invisible
what am I talking about?
oh——- I was just thinking
that as people
we subject our sameness
to a diagrammatically open unknown (((( space?)))
ONLY BECAUSE I THINK I AM I AM AND I AM
yet I can not articulate you as nothing of any consequence
BUT I KNOW YOU ——- YOU KNOW ME
WE ARE THE DNA OF OUR EARTH
SO SIMPLE AS THAT ARE WE
that WE make the trees laugh
c angelica guillen, 2016
shield her cuerpo
from a skilled and laborious
burning summer sun
with ancient tranquility and direction
her breast milk flows
the world silences itself
a brown woman
with a wide hat
work worn clothes
feeds her child
c angelica guillen, 2016