Postcards From Paradise: Remember, I Love You

Mexican Children ‘70’s  by William Mahan with kind permission

I Am Offering this Poem

BY JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA

I am offering this poem to you,

since I have nothing else to give.

Keep it like a warm coat

when winter comes to cover you,

or like a pair of thick socks

the cold cannot bite through,

                         I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,

so it is a pot full of yellow corn

to warm your belly in winter,

it is a scarf for your head, to wear

over your hair, to tie up around your face,

                         I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would

if you were lost, needing direction,

in the wilderness life becomes when mature;

and in the corner of your drawer,

tucked away like a cabin or hogan

in dense trees, come knocking,

and I will answer, give you directions,

and let you warm yourself by this fire,

rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

                         I love you,

It’s all I have to give,

and all anyone needs to live,

and to go on living inside,

when the world outside

no longer cares if you live or die;

remember,

                         I love you.

Jimmy Santiago Baca, “I Am Offering this Poem” from Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems. Copyright © 1990 by Jimmy Santiago Baca. Source: Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1990)
I have used this poem in a previous post, but it seemed most appropriate here considering Jimmy Baca’s own childhood history, which you may read about by clicking on the link Here.

History  of Ipoderac
On June 27th a group of three women: Maria Elena Landa Abrego, Maria Elena Calderón de Gomez, and Consuelo Compeán viuda de Bárcena, that had worked with inmates as volunteers, decided to found Ipoderac as a support alternative for children and youth that had suffered from social exclusion.
With great will and after much effort, they managed to acquire the land where the institution stands these days and to start the construction of the first house. Nowadays Ipoderac  counts six houses, each one with capacity to host twelve children, two volunteers and a resident educator; as part of the work formation model: a herd of goats, a cheese dairy, a workshop for the production of soap, a carpentry, a greenhouse to produce tomatoes and land for the production of vegetables for self consumption; additionally there is a computer lab, an educative psychology workshop a psychological therapy room and a general kitchen plus a soccer field and a basketball court.
*Please click on links to learn more about Ipoderac.

Interview with Socially Excluded children at IPODERAC 2008

Here is a very immediate and direct way that you can help the children of Mexico while purchasing a beautiful work of art that will always carry a greater significance .

Please click on this button to go to recuerda mi corazon’s post for the Oaxaca Street Children Grassroots Shrine Auction hosted by Rebecca Brooks and click on the “gallery of Hope” to see the wonderful shrines being sold to benefit an education for deeply impoverished children in Mexico who, through your support, will be able to attend school for the first time!

For More Postcards from Paradise please visit Rebecca’s blog. Beauty is truth and truth, beauty.