Bob Dylan in Mexico) A Jacona Prayer

Matthew Raymond

(Bob Dylan in Mexico) A Jacona Prayer

I wrote a song on a borrowed guitar. I sang to walls that barely knew my shadow, for I was new to the house and the light was dim.

There were crickets crying in empty lots where children played with fire and stared at me as I passed. I spent evenings writing postcards that I sent back to my home at the center of the world. My father cried when they didn't arrive.

In the morning, weak trumpets across a dawn of soft footsteps and roosters on rooftops calling out for the light and for their cages. Women in aprons in cool dark salas lighting candles for the Virgen.

I stood on those dirt streets and wondered at the horses standing still against the wall for the shade and the dusty faced boys of barrio brick homes and trash-filled creeks. I held my money

tightly in my pocket and my sweat took the shine from the coins.

It was the muddy season then, and there were motorcycles blossoming on roads I could not see, and men who kept their shoes shined and others who just shined, and carts were pulled by burros and a man could sell fruit. Liquor flowed from every kitchen tap as ifthe government had suddenly seen the error of its ways.

Still a lot of people stood around. There was always time for waiting, and for food and a beer and the sounds of the restaurant where I ate and watched the rain in the strange street and listened to the kitchen.