Mi Abuelo
By Alberto Ríos
Where my grandfather lies is in the ground
where you can hear the future
like an Indian with his ear at the tracks.
A pipe leads down to him so that sometimes
he whispers what will happen to a man
in town or how he will meet the best
dressed woman tomorrow and how the best
man at her wedding will chew the ground
next to her. Mi abuelo is the man
who speaks through all the mouths in my house,
an echo of me hitting the pipe sometimes
to stop him from saying my hair is a sieve is the only other sound. It is a phrase
he says, and my hair is a sieve is sometimes
repeated for hours out of the ground
when I let him, which is not often.
An abuelo should be much more than a man