My name is Padre Gautuma and for years I had a recurring dream.

The dream was always that I was about to walk into a large cave and that I knew that

something waited for me in the cave and that I was very frightened.

The whole dream would be building up and building up to getting to that mouth of the cave,

going in or waiting or not and then I'd wake up.

And something happened to me when I began to go into that cave in my poems, in my imagination,

even something you occurred.

22. La Botta, by Esteban Rodriguez.

At home, there was nothing your father couldn't turn his workboots into.

A hammer for loose nails, a prop to even stubborn tables and chairs, a weapon to end the lives of anonymous insects.

And there were nights when he would sleepwalk and out in the yard with nothing but underwear on,

he'd smack together the bottoms of his boots as if there were spirits he had to ward off,

as if his past had taken on some once human form and to remind him that no one is ever free of sin,

made it its duty to stalk him at home.

And though it lasted no more than a few minutes and your mother would wake him up, bring him back in,

you figured that the boots had done their job, that the reason he never used sticks, pots or pans,

or yelled at the top of his lungs was because he wanted the spirit to know exactly who he was,

and he had every right to be at peace on whatever ground he walked.

This poem La Boata is the 22nd poem in a poetry sequence titled La Theria,

and La Theria is a traditional game of chance popular in Mexico and in Mexican-American cultures.

It's kind of like Bingo, but uses images on a deck of cards instead of numbered ping pong balls.

And each poem in this sequence of poems revolves around one of the 54 cards.

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