El Parque Central, Antigua Guatemala

two young girls in traje crying

their mother laughs and comforts them

and returns to work selling camisas

to tourists seeking some local color

the older homeless woman is still

on her feet, her thin dirty legs

poking out from the colorless shirt

that’s covering her this cold morning

I don’t know why she’s been shouting

at the kids, but for a brief moment

she has the attention even of

the feral prowling shoe-shine boys

a friend tells me she’d overheard

the woman earlier that morning

repeating softly to herself:

the flowers are blue, yellow, red