Its Sunday afternoon
I’m walking down Market street
Passed a Baptist church
This holy place has become a home of sound
Voices sing through the windows
As if god were a birdsong

The pavement outside
Is littered with fallen leaves
Soaked by the first droplets
Of a winters rain

I walk up 56th street
Past beuginvilios sending forth
Their last withering blossoms

An old man stands
Hunch backed in his open garage
Arranging his tools in orderly fashion

An old woman across the street
Prunes her weathered roses
As if to tend to beauty
In this dilapidated city of concrete

Up to Shattuck Avenue
Past the liquor store
Where bottles of spirits
Line the shelves
Like a modern day pharmacy
Past littered glass and a torn couch
To La Pena Cultural Center

Its Sunday afternoon
I walk through La Penas glass threshold
The smell of paella and empanadas
Dance across tables
The bomba musicians have started to gather
Like streams of water
They are laughing and talking shit like family
Trunks of carefully carved trees
Stretched with animal skin
Unloaded from bags
Are placed between legs
And the music begins
Three drummers and one playing the clave
I take my seat and begin listening
The bomba is thick as honey
Rises like smoke
Dances like dust
Everything is shaken
People are arriving in flocks
Feathers are unfolded
The room is soon filled with song
The walls are sweating
I can smell sex in the air
It smells sacred and ancient
Hips jirate in unison
Hands flail as if pencils
Writing poems on the vanishing air

Its Sunday afternoon
Voices sing through the windows
The pavement outside
Is littered with fallen leaves
Soaked by the first droplets
Of a winters rain