An Altar for Amaly - Un Suspiro

Amaly Celeste Santos Salazar - May 17,2004 – June 17, 2004

It is a Buddhist belief that it is not the length of time that determines your life but the number of breaths you breathe. Amaly Celeste, my first-born daughter’s life was like one extended breath. Her living outside of my womb was a continuous struggle to breathe and when she finally did breathe on her own, the struggle then was against death. It is the poetry of this breath for which I make an offering of love. It is my own struggle against forgetting, despite time and the natural unfolding of life that threatens to wash her memory away. It is my way of holding her life in my breath, of creating a space for her return.

May for My Daughters: Amaly and Avelina

It is May again,
when blue blemishes of sky fold over the rain
buds bloom at the seams, and the
humming bird, el colibri ignites a mixed blessing in its soar

it is May again,
a time synonymous with birthing
the impermanence of our lives pushed up
against a tapestry of memory and pollen, golden green and
red as the color of my living daughter’s eyes
she has just turned one,
my first-born daughter would have been two
om mani peme hung

it is May again,
a time also synonymous with dying
within me burrowed are their little beings still
together in a brew of loss and love
what a triumph to be born, life
emerging from life in a tangle of violence and beauty
but an equal triumph it is to leave breath behind
to surrender to the inescapable will of nature

it will be May again
despite winter’s forced hibernations
or the dander of dandelions wilted in the sun
when el colibri will come to my window to drink
from the blossoms of fuchsia and the laughter of a
little girl will echo in our garden, growing
it will be, one day in May


Note: This poem was written last year pre-blog but I thought it appropriate today...