Our inhabitance: tables that wives set each evening
with shallow bowls of Manzanillas olives,

conjectures of cumulus anvils in the weather,
demands our crops make on rivers we shrink

to irrigate the best vineyards of Castilla-La Mancha.

Our dreams of home come down to this: brother farmers
and their sons we could name on one hand,

cubiletes our fathers raise to salute departed friends,
pike and mullet we catch from a bridge

at El Tranco, trains that wake us as they pass Segovia,

our vision no less unburdened: sunfalls ambering orchards
and vineyards, like votive flames that flicker

in the corners of our eyes, harvests near complete,
our gitano fieldhands in the kinship

of dark wine and failing light.