Gringo Haiku II: Meet the Authors

One day in November of 2004 I got an email from Leah Feldon, a friend I’d known in Manhattan twenty years earlier, just checking in to be sure I had her email address, because she was moving to Mexico. (I’m not filling in the details of husbands and ex-husbands and such). I wrote her back to say that I was planning to leave California in February to spend three months in San Miguel to decide whether I wanted to live there permanently. The phone rang seconds later; it was Leah saying the she had just bought a house in San Miguel. Now, anyone who lives here will not be surprised by this coincidence: it is a classic it-happens-all-the-time San Miguel vortex story. So here we are in this small town, four years later, after decades of occasional visits and email contact, savvy gringos who give you local advice and color in seventeen-syllable doses. See the first Gringo Haiku post here.

Old friends meet again
in San Miguel. No surprise:
Everyday magic….

Hopeful gringo hordes
cross the guarded border to
Seek a better life.

Goats hang from hooks. Piles
Of gizzards, tongue, shanks, hooves. Hey,
where’s the shrink-wrapped meat?

At Bellas Artes
I practice ancient art form.
Not flamenco. Yoga!

Through shafts of morning
light and birdsong I cross the park
to get a facelift.

Hola, amiga!
Great to run into you…for
the third time today.