Have I introduced you to my sister Coral and her family yet? If not, here they are, taken last summer at the Sylvan Lake Baha'i Summer School in Alberta, Canada: Ovidio, Coral, Celeste, William, Juliette, Angelica, and Sarah. Coral & Ovidio met and married in Haifa when doing service at the Baha'i World Centre in the early '90s, and then travelled as Baha'is to Central America to support community development there, known as 'pioneering' in our faith. Ovidio is originally from Honduras and the children were all born either there or in Belize.

In 2002, I did some overtime and managed to save enough dinero to take our three children to Belize, and while there we travelled by bus and truck throughout Guatemala and Honduras, where Ovidio's family showed us every kind hospitality for a week. This lingers in my memory in many ways, and one of the long poems I have written about the experience has been accepted by an excellent Baha'i periodical from the United States, World Order, so I won't retell the story here since it is forthcoming at some point in poetic form from that publication. Suffice it to say that I still write about these experiences. A couple of friends, Hunter and Hans, joined us for part of the journey, as during that time they were part-time residents of Tegucigalpa, where their parents were then living.

Since then, my sister and her family have moved to Canada, and are living in northern British Columbia (where yes, Ovidio does get a little tired of snow...but on the other hand, how many Hondurans do you know who can drive a zamboni?) Sometimes I think I should write a book about my family! I am not sure they'd ever forgive me, though! Anyway, I thought today would be a good day to share more loved ones, as I have learned that a variety of family and friends around and about do in fact tune in to the blog to keep up with our news.

I think I'll share one of the poems from our Central American experience. Perhaps this will give you a wee armchair journey, with a mother and her three children to see a beloved sister and her family in Santa Lucia. When I think of them, my thoughts go to Ovidio's mother, Tia Julia, who left this world for the next one just recently, and whom all of us loved.

journey

he took us for breakfast in San Pedro Sula
heat tamed, air conditioned, buffet:
eggs, chorizos, frijoles , Honduran pastries
after morning on a sand beach where
two large ships anchored before journey north.

we drove into mountains, stopped for ice at a petrol station, bathed
in melting cubes, climbed past watermelon stands, pineapples, bananas,
a higher altitude lake, fish on lines.

buildings lined rickety road like overgrown meccano, tipsy
down into Siguatepeque, ancient valley houses of stone & mortar,
survivors of hurricanes, cobbled streets narrow with doors
into pocketed landscapes, byways foreshadowing plains &

coconut water drunk through straws made in plastic factories of nuevo america
riches from plunder after rock faces shattered with ads, “Cafe Maya”. cinder block homes, stone beauty, goods carried in baskets on the backs of brown women & weavings, clay bodies pregnant in Valle de Angeles.

like any other tourist, i travel carrying plates, earthen figures,
painted scorpions, lizards, tiny fruits, minimos, sweet small bananas
named for the coin that sold them for nothing, not worth growing,
shaped like doughy fingers of pan dulces dipped in cafe con leche,
bread swollen bodies to fill small brown bellies near Burger King

¿cuantos lempiras?

wood beauty boxes with inlaid hours of brown hands chipping future.
on the hillside, the statue of Jesus watches the city near big Mac.
Tegucigalpa, hear how it flows to the sea like the rivers of road west
to ships sailing

her white hand on one brown man
rewrites history. Old cities overlook slides from mountain
to milpa, cross stitch the borderline wound
of this skin. elegy on cobblestones near a church
in Santa Lucia until the next ship goes north.