MARIACHI AND THE TEJEDOR
By George Pratt

Pale new rising star the sky light
Waxing moon the tile roofs highlight
Pueblo washed in amber twilight
Calls to vespers mission bell
Bougainvillea furls the petal
Sun in low declining fettle
Gilds the waters molten metal
Bids the fading day farewell
Spirit slumps in weaver weary
Shadow seeps through casa dreary
Pall now renders vision bleary
Skeins the wilting fingers twist
Day through evening’s gutter draining
Heavy warp on ratchets straining
Love alone young heart sustaining
Nigh the time for lovers’ tryst
Listen! Voices–rising, swelling
Sweet through old pueblo welling
Famed ancestral epic telling
Deeds the chorus, love the soul
Troubadours, their stories olden
Soft guitars and trumpets golden
Timid, restless hearts embolden
Crooning Mariachis stroll
Rising from the gay cantina
Mariachi concertina
Irresistible subpoena
Summons longings yet suppressed
Cant commutes to virile lever
Prises soul of weary weaver
Fires languid heart to fever
Flames young tejedora’s breast
Grand harmonic oratory
Trumpets warp the loom in story
Out their bells in stirring glory
Notes of liquid lava drool
Strings their fickle harness tying
Wild capricious shuttle flying
Warp and weft the lovers sighing
Drawing yarns from heartbeat’s spool
Soft the voices ululating
Hymn o perfidy collating
Tragic love song story plaiting
Through the yarns that build the weft
Voice of Mariachi grieving
Tapestry in lyric weaving
Skein paid out but merely leaving
Mariachi hearts bereft
Maid discards the failing shuttle
Casts the skein from fingers subtle
To the casement urgent scuttle
Earnest hands the shutters part
Voices rise and sweetly hover
Heart takes wing to thus discover
There her Mariachi lover
Come to claim fair weaver’s heart
Mariachi heels a-clatter
Beater down the weft-yarns batter
Lift-blocks, battens, set a-clatter
Loom and chorus meld as one
Bobbins spent, once wound in sadness
Now rewind with joy and gladness
Pluck the strings in carefree madness
Dogged cupid’s will be done
Viols warp now celebration
Soft guitars weave jubilation
Trumpet echoes high ovation
Lovers’ vows by moonlight sworn
Sweet the chords the heddles spreading
Love’s eternal reeds are threading
Heartbeat pedals ever treading
Tapestry of joy is born