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'68 The Day of the Dead, Mexico Cheeks puffed full as fat old Wind's, Brown woman round from head to bare toe Blows life into the censer breathing Blue musk over her man below, While the children shout and tumble about In the tree with the octupus arms.

Beside a grave gay with white flowers The women are sharing their bread, They shake with laughter as they draw nearer To that democratic Day of the Dead.

Now each family is complete: Dead lovers to the loved appear, Brothers, grandmas, mothers' spirits come For the reunion of the year, And the children shout and tumble about In the tree with the octupus arms.

Brown tears from blood-brown candles drip, The flames boast, "We are immortal", And blaze around the homemade box Of one only ten days mortal.

A favored family kneels and weeps-- Wealthy and poor here are the same-- And their rich tears fall on loose fresh dirt, Still thick on the tongue his name, But the children shout and tumble about In the tree with the octupus arms.

Petals pale as a midday moon, A cross in wilting petals dressed Alone on a mound of trampled earth Which humble hands have blessed.

Penny candles, glad little suns, Light a darkening village under a spreading tree Where, in meeting, the living and the dead Come alive on this day, As the children shout and tumble about In the tree with the octupus arms.

Lynn Perry-Miller hand-written loverly, Lynn

Host and Guest Born from a thawing chunk on the warm hearth, it reconnoitered my room to the south sill to roost above a river of register heat and fold its wings, a metamorphosed worm.

Here was a visitor a poet could afford, a speckled bit of flight as calm as a flower that seemed to live on broken bits of sunbeam--- ultra-violet lunch and infra-sunset supper!

My snow-salted pines were gauged by tiny eyes whose sun-taught body poised for sunny slopes, denying those drifts (fallen clouds, hard mist?); but I who happened to be the temporal host, I waited on pensive wings a week, two weeks, bringing lettuce, apple and pumpkin rind, jailing my lonely angelic insect from its faith.

O airy flesh and wing-borne dreams, how evilly I kept you here, secure from your snowscape of belief! Charles Miller Charlie Best, from an old butterfly! - pulque -fed. How's Gladys?