Two Poems by Lorraine Caputo

El Convento de San Francisco

A fortress façade of white-trimmed grey,
the bell towers with three stilled bells,
the doors shut against the heat of mid-day.

Within we walk, through the old convent.
After 450 years, it is now a school,
the green blackboards with faded chalk writings –
lessons of language and history,
the hymn of Nicaragua,
bars and sharps and words
woven across the space.
Within one sala,
upon a blue-bordered porcelain plaque:
Bartolomeo de las Casas
Defender of the Indians
Resided in this room
In the year 1536.

Past the weed-covered courtyard
with hoopless basketball courts,
is a collection
of pre-Columbian statues
raided from the islands
in the lake a few blocks away,
now protected behind a fence,
covered by a red-tiled roof.
Time-worn,
weather-worn,
forgotten in this aged place –
no-one has been here for a long, long while.
Leaves blown in upon the tiled floor,
signs askew on their pedestals.
The faces of dead heroes and images
of crocodiles, jaguars and eagles
gaze across the half-ruined compound.

Dissolving Into the Silence

Again this morning
I awoke too quickly

I tried to gather
the fraying threads
the tenuous chords
of my dreams

but already they had
dissolved
into the predawn
silence

Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose poetry appear in over 400 journals on six continents, and 23 collections – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada and nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures on facebook or on her website here.