The sun is beginning to go down
over a field of yellow onions. The edges
of the clouds are almost pink, and at this hour
the maguey rises up like a flower of dark blades.
I worked so long today I have forgotten
my own hunger. It takes a full minute
for me to remember a word I have used
all my life. What the Mexicans call poncho.
At twilight I see it, abandoned, hanging like a ghost
on the limb of a tree: my own brown ruana
next to gray speckled chickens pecking at roots
and a black track of storm coming west over the green mountain.