Across the courtyard from the balcony
the pigeons walk the red clay tile
of the hotel roof, a scramble of pipes
and chimneys, flower pots, extra tile,
discarded fluorescent lights....

The tiles are not fastened down.
The hot air rises through them,
the rain runs off. There is
a gutter where the pigeons sleep.

They land on the rim of the wooden water barrel
and bend over to drink, their tails
flipped up like hands raised in salutation.

They are a bird like us, with their persistent courting
and the song they mumble about the bushes of love.

I gave my heart away this winter. I had held it
in my fingers so long, heavy red clay muscle
waking me up tired in the morning.
How fine it is to have this circulation start
in another body, and come back! I am easy
on my feet, like a young girl dancing in her room,
like yesterday’s sparrow that coasted through the door
swooped ‘round our room, and left without grazing a wall.

Plain brown sparrows nest in the beams
over the balcony. They hop through
the bars of the parrot’s cage
and drink his water, peck at his feed.

We saw black swans in the lake at the park
bobbing their heads for each other, cooing, their song
like a wind between their bodies, not a word to be heard
just some nonsense caught in the nodes of harmony
and sent out over the dirty water and the peanut shells.

Where did I get this phrase about the heart? I just
remember Reverend Francis in his woodshop, bored,
listening to the woman complain about her son who
“hasn’t given his heart to Jesus” (and Francis
nodding, rocking in his chair, leaving her alone).

Last year I’d sit by myself and read
in the barrio church. At one of the side altars
an old black-and-white etching
of the Child with an armful of hearts,
holding one forward with his left hand.
Drops of blood. The small clipped photos
of children stuck around the image
in thanks or petition. Solemn faces,
the serious mood of a photographer’s booth.
Outside, a courtyard and trees painted white
at the bottom. Birds and dust.

The tiles on the hotel roof are a porous, earthy red,
like flower pots. They are just laid there without
mortar and soak up the sunlight and the heat.
The pigeons move confidently, their wiry feet clicking
as they go. They stop and coo at anything their size,
then fly up and circle, a clapping of wings, an ovation.

She took my heart as lightly as one of her own breaths,
one of her laundry hums, simple--not that
acrylic green and bossy parrot yelling papá,
but the dun-colored birds at the peak of the roof
where the mud tiles fold over as if melted,
where the song carries--take my heart, my purr,
my ruffled blood--and the pigeons walk,

all shoulder and breast beneath the bobbing, servant head.