Costa Rica
La Vida Selva
We roll
over bosk and shore,
you and I,
over cloud-sopped mountains,
pustulating volcanoes,
undulating forests,
always moving.
Thick white clouds
mist and mull slowly,
take their time,
dirt roads scrawl penciled lines
between burnt-amber rooftops
on tilted crests.
We land
on a tiny airstrip
parallel to the cemetery,
just in case.
Bags bounce on the dirt road,
sweat clings in our hair,
things don’t roll here,
they bump.
Puerto Jiménez,
Tico town,
its green vines sprawling
higher than houses
its chocolate covered people,
their endless eyes
and unhurried voices:
gracias,
con gusto,
la alegría es mía.
A man hunches under his hat
in the bouncing back
of a dust-spewing truck.
A little girl gives me a flower,
tiny and blue,
it’s her fifth birthday.
Wide-brimmed hats,
umbrellas for shade.
Fish tacos
and mango drinks.
La panadería wall reminds
what Jesus said about bread:
Yo soy el pan de vida.
If you look at a map,
the Osa Peninsula
is like a female bear, la osa,
sleek-headed
with an eye at
Laguna de Corcovado.
It’s forty-five
teeth-chattering minutes
to our jungle home,
all open,
no glass windows,
mercy for the birds.
Constant sweating
is sustained purging.
The howler monkeys
are loudest before dawn,
their scouring flush
of hoots and barks
is menacing.
I wonder what they look like
when they make those sounds.
At 5:10 am,
just like that,
the light comes,
the night gecko heckles
one more time,
he’ll be back.
En la rosada naranja de la madrugada,
rainbow-colored scarlet macaws
squawk again and again,
flap majestic wings,
beautiful and insistent,
they are the super models
of the jungle.
The spiny lizard,
Garrobo,
long as a clarinet,
peers into the kitchen,
expectant
for fruit offered on a knife.
Birds twill and twitter,
iridescent blue butterflies
make their own light.
The butterfly doesn’t think
about meaning and purpose.
It flits across the stage
a few times,
seen no more.
There is a dance of branch
and wound tail
and scaling body,
spider monkeys
high in the trees over the river.
Do monkeys ever think
about who they are
and what they mean?
Do monkeys ever look up
at the stars
and wonder?
After breakfast,
a tentative white-nosed coati
waddles into the compost.
There are no chores,
thanks to the ants,
everything cleans as it goes.
Playa Pan Dulce
is sweet bread beach,
but the waves crackle and pull,
unforgiving,
overturning boulders into our toes.
We stand in it,
up to our necks,
pulled off balance,
sucked up with the sand.
We learn to ride
the tug of waves,
in the salty green water,
warm like a bath.
You take my hand,
“Dig your toes in.”
Love is a sphere,
you say,
where you’re strong, I’m weak,
where I’m strong, you’re weak,
we allow each other
to fill in the weaknesses
until we’re round, smooth,
until we roll.
Pelicans fish nearby
and men fish
thrashed by the waves,
they don’t give up.
We don’t know
the rainforest river trail,
and when it becomes steep,
winding on the edge,
you want to turn back.
I take your hand,
“Let’s try it.”
The winding trail rolls up
to a waterfall
and we submerge
in chilling relief.
The rainforest river soothes
in cool, clear waters,
so clear it’s deeper than you think.
Little fish chew at our toes,
tiny dart frogs pop
from under leaves,
tiny, tiny.
Surprised,
the quetzal,
gone that quick.
You grab a trunk,
and a family of howler monkeys stirs
high, high in the canopy,
there’s a baby on a back,
one scoots, fearless, down the tree
to look right at you.
The knife is the tool of the jungle,
and our guide at the chocolate farm
whips his out from a back pocket
to cut coconuts and bamboo straws
into instant drinks.
The cacao beans,
purple inside,
grow from the trunk
of a scraggily little bush.
To make chocolate
ferment the beans a week or so,
roast in a pan,
crush with a stone,
sift the chaff,
grind the chocolate.
Even your jokes in Spanish get laughs:
“Uno momento aquí, (points to lips)
uno año allí” (points to hips)
Story after story,
smiles and tears of laughter,
and their eyes seek mine,
looking for validity.
You’re the storyteller,
I’m the truthteller.
We smell lemon leaves,
lime leaves,
garlic leaves,
cardamom leaves,
and crush leaves
to make red dye,
and the sleepy dormirlona petals
curl where you touch them.
We walk inside a ceiba tree,
three hundred years old,
long-nosed bats live within,
the scales from its bark
are firm like ancient seeds.
What does old mean
to a tree like that?
Does the ceiba tree have a spirit?
The guide thought so.
Does it commune with God?
Is it the tree of life?
Has it met the Boruca people?
Does it hear the song
of the quetzal?
What do the bats know?
What other reality,
are we not perceiving?
or perceiving,
but not understanding?
And why are we so afraid to imagine
the existence of more than we can prove
with senses alone?
And why does it matter to us so much?
We return home,
the place the jungle allows us
to call home
for now.
The afternoon breeze blows
blessing through the house.
You sleep in the hammock
until the monkeys wake you.
Mono titís,
squirrel monkeys,
small and fuzzy furry
with long, strong tails,
crawl over each other,
over bananas
hanging high in the tree,
their hands
articulated
and long-fingered,
their faces with tiny intent.
We choose a white pineapple,
its top yellowing,
juicy, not sweet,
and return three of its sprouts
to the ever-yielding earth.
The pineapple sprouts bite
into my fingers, sting my hands.
A mangrove black hawk
swoops into a tree,
a lizard dangling lifeless
from its fiery beak.
The cry of the quetzal is forlorn.
Hearing the song of the quetzal,
say the Boruca,
may mean the battle is won.
The evening sizzles with
the buzz of crickets,
the high trill of frogs,
the lizards retreat
to their rocks,
the geckos return
with their jests,
insects sprawl like spilled jacks.
Halloween crabs,
deep orange and purple
as big as my hand,
click over the floor in the dark,
fifteen at last count,
and the cricket’s wings look
like brand new leaves.
Just
you
and me
away from distraction
and temptation,
our eyes know each other,
hurt and love each other
too well,
our eyes smooth each other over
in the current of an eternal river.
Days roll together
and we survive
the verdant, alive, pure,
sharp-edged, dangerous,
unforgiving, beautiful
jungle life.
We bump our way back.
A funeral
and a flight,
out of the jungle,
we roll on.
