Viento

Elizabeth N. Flores

June 7, 2026

It was a mystery why Mr. Santos 

sat smiling calmly in his wheelchair, 

waving the nurses away,

when heavy winds knocked 

over plants and chairs

in the Memory Care courtyard. 

Mr. Santos was a sweet gentleman, 

easy going when it came to his meals, 

medicines, and baths, 

but voiceless since his last stroke. 

The nursing director asked his family if they 

could shed light on his actions. 

“He likes the wind, the stronger the better, 

and we don’t know why,” she told them. 

“That’s easy,” the oldest son said. 

“Pop is remembering when 

he finished building the patio for Papa Grande.”

“The story goes our grandfather

was hesitant to place the last shingles 

on the roof of the patio that terribly windy Sunday morning,

but sad as he had promised our grandmother 

the job would be done that day.”

“Pop was only ten, 

but he strapped on the tool belt, 

climbed the ladder to the patio roof,

and hammered the shingles harder 

than even he imagined he could,

completing the job in the midst 

of cries by everyone to 

‘Get down, you’ll fall!’”

“Pop liked to say, ‘That day I helped my father, 

I was a man.’” 

The nurses, doing all they could to ease the lives of the residents,

now agreed to take turns sitting near Mr. Santos 

when the wind took command of the courtyard,

making sure he was the last to come inside.

Elizabeth N. Flores, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, taught for over 40 years at Del Mar College and was the college’s first Mexican American Studies Program Coordinator. Her poems can be found in Corpus Christi Writers 2022 and Corpus Christi Writers 2023, both edited by William Mays, TPA Quarterly, the Windward Review, the Texas Poetry Assignment, The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging, edited by Laurence Musgrove, and ¡Somos Tejanas!: Chicana Identity and Culture in Texas, edited by Jody A. Marín and Norma E. Cantú.