My mother and father
poured out their lives caring for us.

Long after we did not see them anymore,
this caring became our own smiles
that we pass on to our children,
to our students, friends,
to strangers

My parents got their caring power
from distant people
whose names I never knew
in faded unsmiling photos.

My mother's kiss is from a thousand mothers
and the shade of my father's tree is a great forest.

A lady who serves my coffee each morning
adds free talk and humor;
strangers on the street add hellos;
a doctor goes beyond money;
a nameless woman used her car
to push us out of mud
when we were so far from home;
teachers stayed after school
to enhance our individual fascinations of
microscopes, photography, classification of plants.

The lot of us, all of us, and nature,
are moving forward connected
and we have been stronger than evil,
or we would have vanished long ago.

Blanca, her joy, is a thousand smiles
from Mexicans that I have never met.
This poem is a message from a great throng
whose names you do not know.

The row of noble trees that border my morning walk
were once small planted trees.
They are now gifts, gifts from those 
long departed but
here.