Napo 3

Today's prompt was to write about change that happens over a long period of time.
I wrote about my hometown, McAllen, and how change seems rapid there if you leave, but slow if you're living and experiencing it. I want to work more on this idea, maybe how that change of a landscape feels like a metaphor for the change in myself.
Innocence to experience. It's not a bad thing. It just happens.

Magic Valley

It’s easy to believe in magic here

In El Valle, where grandmas reminisce

About how this bustling city used to be an orange grove,

So many rows of neatly planted trees,

So many globes of gold, and so much sweetness,

Enough to satisfy the hunger of the world.

And anyone could take a piece of fruit

And hold it their hands, and take a bite,

And let the sour and sugar of it all

Run down their chins in fall and spring.

And their abuelas then remembered the ranchos,

With the infinity of cattle grazing

on the endless swathes of green

and the countless calloused hands

that fed the world and made it turn,

whose own abuelas then remembered monte,

the wilderness stretching out for miles

to be cleared by other calloused hands,

the wasteland of beauty and of thorns

that stretched out like an open palm.

It’s easy to believe in magic

When I return each spring to find this valley

Changed again. Another shopping center

Blooming, another neighborhood flourishing,

Another road being carved into the earth,

As I breathe in deep and take in the scent

Of citrus blossoms, a vestigial scent

Of our history, mine and this valley’s,

Where though the landscape changes,

The sweetness of this place still fills the mornings.