Maya & More poem

Mayatenango

Maximón dies each Good Friday

reborn to live another year

in a new house

craving rum and cigars

draped in quetzal colored scarves

giving and taking away at his whim

Sage, cinnamon, rosemary

fire and flowers

offered on church steps

Greasy tallow ancestor candles

burn along aisles

where shamans cast beans

foretelling futures

Saints and spirits share space and believers

in amicable proximity beneath the canopy

of Yaxche, ceiba tree of life

linking nine levels of Xibalba below

thirteen levels of heaven

through the navel of el mundo maya