Kilometer 30

This is not Margaritaville with its azure waters its fruity umbrellad drinks and giddy tourists. This is no one's fantasy island. Here, there is only the primeval wind lashing dull dun dust into a perpetual swirl a maddening dance macabre. Here, rocky cliffs rise and interupt the horizon sentinel sierras as drab and lifeless as the dust. Here, in this Chihuahuan desert the only brightness an unexpected rainbow splash is in the skirts of Raramuri women. Here, ancient Apache phantoms and gunslinger's ghosts mingle midst ramshackle shanties in colonias of stark squalor where roosters crow in a new dawn of, "No hay". While 35 km. east Ciudad Juarez swarms in its terrible beauty city of death though bustling in modernity with its stores and markets brimming with plenty. And I, weary poet. wonder how can I love and hate a land both at the same time? its poverty and grime the numbing nothingness repels me... But- I am mesmerized and drawn as if by the sparkle of stars on a sultry velvet night by the proud endurance - a tenacious spirit that preserves this place and its people - the stubborn plodding forward come what may- shared by this wandering wordsmith. * Kilometer 30 is a tract of land on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez, my in-laws keep some pigs and chickens there. However, many of the poorest of the poor actually live there in cardboard shacks with no running water or electricity - it looks like something not on the American continent. The Raramuri are a tribe native to the Chihuahuan mountains, "No hay" means "There isn't any".