Image courtesy of Windslash. Shared via a Creative Commons license.

∞

Move

I close my eyes
and still,
try to concentrate
on my own breathing,
on the beating
of my own heart
and I realize
all being
is movement,
as millions
outside
criss cross
this Earth,
as a cold moon
circles the Earth,
as this Earth
circles
a hot sun,
as my thoughts
go back
to my mother’s corpse,
lying
for a year
in Dominican
soil.

 

∞

Carlos Hiraldo is a a professor of English at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York. His first collection of poetry, Machu Picchu Me, was published by Palamedes in 2016. His poems have been published in Arizona State University’s Bilingual Review, Struggle, Latino Stuff Review, The View from Here, and the British journals Other Poetry and Fire.