Otavalo Plaza
Subtract the Panamerican heading North and South, the cobble stone streets leading from the highway to the Parque Principal and the grotto of the Virgin, and the Cross beyond. The Municipio and Beto’s tienda who sells good wines and fine cheese; subtract them too. Quiten la iglesia of sorrows eternos, the Mormon center and store front Evangelicos strumming guitar passage to Jesus, the bust of Rumiñauhui, and the legends of those last Incas. Take away the loud speakers in the Plaza de Ponchos, the almuerzos left so the dead loved ones may eat in the Campo Santo —the Holy Ground. Take the tourists back to their busses and the busses back to Quito. Let old mestizos halt the ancient handball game, played each dusk at one end of the plaza in homage to the setting sun. And the Runakunata anchuchichik with their lives of looms and corn and dreams of SUV’s. The simple streams and stones lying in the streams defining East and West. The rivers who find rivers who find bays and oceans. Urkukunata kuyuchichik, Let the mountains move, —erase them. Let the silence of mountains be erased that the voice of a woman —as she gathers the words and the names of a new song into her basket— be heard.