South of the border among the pluripresence
of jellied heat, east of the setting sun, in
Nogales, Mexico, where this sort of thing can occur,
you glimpse twenty meters to your right a thin
Mexican woman who’s walking
alone: black-haired, willowy, tall, her
long arms aglow with toffee-colored skin, 
her wet eyes friendly yet faintly mocking.
She isn’t old, though a little older, her twin
splitting briefly through the rippled heat and mute 
sunlight that coppers her black hair
where she appears mirage-like
and shimmering on air
and heat and laved in gales of light.
And then bursting through your acute
windshield glare she comes into full sight
as something sprung from an underground gate
standing so unexpectedly there
in the sharp southwestern light
that for an instant the world like a top
wobbles to a stop
and everything that’s ever happened to you
all at once in a way you can’t articulate
yet unquestionably true
makes absolute
sense.