Picnic by Limay

My father swerves our old Ford
off the pebbled highway.
We kids sway in truck’s back,
knuckles clasped round handrail.
Clouds of dust corkscrew up,
coloured as brown steppes.
Noonday squints, unforgiving,
through earthy glare.
Identical thorn-bushes
lend prickly shade to roadside;
a partridge whistles in solitary flight
over low vegetation. The landscape is flat,
doesn’t reveal anything of moment.
Neither does the sky. Birds don’t sing.

An empty world breathes soil and light
as we bounce over winding tracks.
Limpid river, snaking out of melting glaciers,
hums nostalgic airs rippling towards Nahuel Huapi.
Limay pipes softly of The Enchanted Valley,
of white waters hailing majestic rocks
shaped like breasts and phalluses.
Eons ago, they were sculptured by Mapuche gods.
Fertility chants to Mother Rock and Father Sky
flutter over Limay’s sacred waters.

Pehuén offers shade for the Ford.
We jump out and run to water’s edge,
already in swimsuits. My mother wears
a castoff navy-blue Jansen.
She’s milk-white, timid,
plump legs dimpling coyly.
Mine is elasticized flowery cotton,
two sizes big, flapping wetly on chest.
Water is cold under desert sun.
We children splash in it for hours.
Later, it’s tinned paste sandwiches,
boiled eggs and apples, crouching
under wild broom-flowers. Sunburn.
My father bundles us into hot Ford
for drive home on rutted highway.
Sweat and grime form runnels on our skin.

Next year we’ll go back, says my father,
drinking black beer in our scented garden.