Ecosystems

Lisa Lopez-Smith

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Jalisco, Mexico

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I’m not saying that I’m good
as a neighbour. The grass out front,
during the rainy season exploding
human-high in a trifling of weeks,
becoming a kudzu of weeds
and spiny trees and wildflowers

just too pretty to mow. Mid-November
I get out the mower, and although
it would be easy to trim the neighbour’s
section too, I don’t do it
anymore, ever since he started
the grassfire that jumped the fence.

Witness the love affair between bees
and flowers, and how bees
will sacrifice their lives for the hive.
Once an old man, standing at the local
cash point, thrust his card
into my hand, rattling off his PIN

but he didn’t know how much
is pension was or how much he needed,
laughing, no más el dinero, mujer!
I once saw a girl at the corner tacos
tuck twenty pesos into the hand
of an old woman, bent over double,

as if she and the girl were both trees
passing nutrients and water to each other.
Another time, I watched two teenagers
walking from the maternity hospital,
he gingerly carrying a tiny bundle,
she a few steps in front, shambling

and shipwrecked. I’ve watched wild
egrets perch on my cows, cleaning
them of ticks and insects, that time
my kids picked up roadside garbage
in front of the house, mostly to-go cups
and hamburger packaging

from the narcos eating lunch there
every day. Just then, unmarked
trucks pulled over and stopped,
guys rummaged through flak jacket
pockets, rustling through the rifles
on the front seat, handed fistfuls of bills

and coins through the windows,
thanking the kids for their effort.
Even our own bodies are collaborations.
Trillions of cells, breath and blood.
And back on the street corner,
that family from El Salvador

(it’s a long walk north with a toddler
and a baby) but that day, the day
before Christmas, the two girls
each clutched a new doll, standing
on the speedbump with their parents,
begging for coins for the journey.

Consider too, that there are 30,000
varieties of roses (everyone knows
just one kind of rose is never
enough), 500 types of sharks,
14,000 species of fungi, 6000 bird
varieties to eat 500 million

metric tons of insects, many of which
live in the jungle out front
where I haven’t yet mowed. My neighbours
are outside, playing cards
by a full moon and fluorescent lighting.
The crickets continue chirruping.

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