The rambling bands play late into the night. A brassy awakening as they stumble down the
street in-step but off-key. Their sound
slips down the chimney becoming amplified and resonant between the handmade
bricks stacked with plaster. I lie parallel to the street on my raft of slumber
as the shrieks of youthful abandon interrupt the obvious flow of this quiet
town. Hours later, before the sun
stretches to the horizon, the blackbirds chatter as if to nag it home to warm
their nests.
At seven, the bells one block from my bed remind sleepers
there are places to kneel and renew, and if the listeners forget, they ring
twice more each half hour, countering the call from Peter’s dreaded bird. A descendant of this bird sits on the wall of
our house, screaming his own praises until the neighbor’s broom restores the
silence.
The paved cobblestone remind me I am in Mexico, as nothing
sounds better on cobblestone than a man on a horse. The shoes of the beast smack the pavement
proudly—the same sound as a child bragging his good deed. As the farmers leave
to the fields, herding their animals for a day of grazing, the early commuters
join the symphony of what is morning—shuffling their old sandals along their
respective paths, murmuring pleasantries.
The abrasive calls of the garbage collectors soon overpower
the softness of the dawn. “Baaasura!”
said so loudly and fast the word is indistinguishable shouting to my
stupor. As the trash men pass, the gas
men follow, in a large rattling, highly flammable truck. For such noise, my dreamy imagination puts a
young man astride the propane tanks beating an empty canister with a stick—a
hero warning the town of the imminent downfall of a household without.
Sleep can no longer distract me from the world outside my
bedroom. I shake off my blanket of
unconsciousness and join the living.
