Storymakers

by Ana Maria Vasquez  from http://www.bridgesacrossborders.org/fair-trade-crafts/

It’s the way we tell our lives,
how humans arrange our experiences.
There are endless ways to assemble,
lay out, and order into orchestration,
the music of our days.
We’re the beings who create
singing tapestries of stories,
And in each place and culture
the cloth we weave of story
changes pattern and vibration over time.

Before the colonizers came to Mexico,
a storybeing the people made
for holy, for mystery, for mother,
was named by Aztecs, Tonantzin,
in Nahuatl meaning “Our Mother”.
It was on the hill of Tepeyac,
that the home of Tonantzin
rose as site of sacred celebration.
Then in a blink of human epochs,
her temple fell. But her story?

The storymaker humans wove her newly,
made her into La Morena, Guadalupe,
Nuestra Señora, Mother of all.
Before the farmer saw the mestiza vision
on the hill of Tepeyac,
they say he heard an indelible melody.
Before the story changed again,
to make the farmer into peasant Juan Diego,
he lived as Talking Eagle, Cuauhtlatoatzin,
a gifted member of the Chichimeca.

Everything is a story,
and every story comes from something true.
The question of the truth of stories
is too simply put to hold an answer.
Belief is only how
you choose today to frame a story.
The cloak of Juan Diego holds
a melody of story that reverberates.
The richest music arises
when the story frame unfurls.

©Susa Silvermarie 2025