Though breath was all I owned
To force my heart to climb,
Though words were all the stones
I had to seal my mind,
You will know why, in time.
Afternoon of a Journey
THERE will never be another,
That day was forever.
We dove through tropic noon
Into a green sky. The palms stood
Quiet, still, their fronds
Like swollen waves about
To break, transparent, lime limned
And streaked from base to rim
With icy light.
Lungs gilled and arms finned wide,
We slipped into the pale
Of that dry sea, following downrays
Until we reached the cool
Of silence, a sandpaved lagoon
Upholding its weight of time
Under trees that climbed.
Perched on a log, we scanned
The currents, the drifting shaft
Of shadows, instinctively alert
To armadillo's crawl, the stir
Of something red,
The eye of an iguana met...
Ourselves. Perceiving
We were not alone in breathing,
Being witness,
As well as evidence
In that primal air,
How all of us shared
In the serene of a sunless glow
Which waterless flowed.
Gently, we moved along a path
That opened as we passed,
Whispering our affirmations
To those secret ones
Who flickered and flashed,
Carrying our echoes back
From near, then far, far off.
And slowly, the silence arced,
Leaped high—and broke,
With parrots in the undertow
As the waves rolled over
And the green tide flooded
The forest floor, whirling,
Swirling a world set free.