there’s freedom,
exploration,
art, science,
wild wings . . .
HENRY
A NEW LIFE
Native villagers accept me.
I soon learn that the blue frogs
I saw in those sky ponds
are useful for poisoning
the sharp tips
of darts.
If I stay here, I’ll have to learn
how to hunt with a blowgun,
and I’ll learn to speak
a new language.
If I stay in this misty heat, I’ll wear
hardly any clothes, and I’ll paint
my skin with the juice of red
achiote berries to keep
biting mosquitoes
from killing me with fevers.
If I stay, I’ll have to forget
that old dream of buying farmland
at home.
Home is here now.
Home is a hut propped on stilts,
as protection against floods
and crocodiles.
I try not to think of Momma,
waiting for a letter,
waiting for silver.
ANITA
MONKEY SCHOOL
This morning, a baby howler
slid down a branch and reached
for my hand with his small fingers.
It was a tender moment,
his face almost human,
the eyes so intelligent.
Now it’s evening, and the little howler
has returned to his family, but I’ve
already made friends with another
funny monkey, a skinny capuchin,
like the ones that are chained
and trained by organ grinders
in Silver Town.
She sits in a leafy nest, sipping
from the wet fur of her long tail.
When the fur is dry, she dips
the tail into a sky pond
and sips one more time,
never descending low enough
to risk touching the river
where crocodiles
wait.
Quietly, the little monkey and I
sit together in a treetop, listening.
Learning.
ONE HOWLER MONKEY
TWO VOICES
I’M YOUNG, BUT I LEARN
HOW TO THROW MY NOISY VOICE
ACROSS TREETOPS, LIKE A CLOUD
OR A BIRD, REACHING FAR . . .
and then I reach down
with my arm, hand, knuckles,
fingertips, reaching just far enough
to touch
a stranger’s hand,
a stranger’s small,
quiet voice.
When I leap back up to my family,
I remember the human song,
AND I HOWL.
THE CAPUCHIN MONKEY
CLEVER
I’m small and smart
I know how to leap
or perch on a branch
dip my tail into a pond
sip
from the tip
of the fur
never risking
the muddy shore
where jaws
and teeth
lurk.
THE GIANT SWALLOWTAIL BUTTERFLIES
SALT
We’re not afraid of slow, wide jaws.
We land on crocodile
or peccary
or tapir
skin,
nose,
eyes . . .
We need to sip
the salt of earth
wherever we find
minerals,
sweat,
tears.
THE KING VULTURE
DEATH
Death is king
in the mud
on steep slopes
Death is food
in the heat
in the rain
Death is life
in my beak
down my throat
Death in my belly
every day
all day.
THE TREES
LIFE
So many of us are gone now
that survivors
struggle
to grow
enough green
for hungry birds and monkeys
who leave our branches stripped
of leaves and twigs and fruit
even though we need
their help
to move
seeds . . .
MATEO
BIRD ART
Last year, Augusto finally
abandoned his contract.
He has made arrangements
to sell paintings of birds to museums
far away—my paintings along with his,
as if he understands that I am already
a true artist, capable of showing
the beauty of wild creatures
in flight.
I find it hard to believe
that in the old days, bird artists
killed their subjects, then stuffed
and posed them, instead of painting
life.
ANITA
UNCERTAINTY
Each sight in the forest is always new.
Mateo paints bellbirds, woodpeckers,
and shining honeycreepers,
while I climb massive ceiba trees
with buttress roots
so immense that they look
like stone fortresses,
and then I climb walking trees
with skinny
stilt roots
that make
them look
like dancers.
All of it seems so permanent, until
we pass through areas where logging
has left nothing but mud, dust, mud . . .
MATEO
FOREST NIGHTS
At dusk, there’s the blinking flash
of fireflies and the steady light
of phosphorescent mushrooms.
Together, Anita and I wonder
how anything as ordinary
as an insect, or a fungus,
can glow
in the dark.
Will every detail of nature
always seem
so mysterious?
HENRY
LOVE IS A NEW LANGUAGE
I have found my own sweet sweet
bride. I’m going to marry a village girl
from the Emberá tribe.
No one from the Serpent Cut ever
thinks about the native people
who truly belong to this butterfly forest.
No one wonders what Panama was like
before the logging, digging, hauling,
and landslides . . .
but now, so many islanders have run away
from silver jobs that languages are blending—
English, Spanish, and French, all mixed up
with Chibchan and Chocó.
It’s as if we’re creating an entirely
new culture.
MATEO
VISITING HENRY
The indios live in open huts
without walls, each floor a platform
propped up on stilts, high above
rainy-season floods
and roaming crocodiles.
If a notched log leans against
the side of a thatched hut, I know
that strangers are welcome to climb up
and visit, but if the log ladder lies flat
on the ground, Anita and I walk on quietly
while villagers sleep
in their peacefully
swaying
hammocks.
The roofs are dry palm fronds,
the floors covered with woven reeds.
Faces are painted with red and black
designs—circles and looped lines
&n
bsp; made from insect-repelling bixa juice.
On feast days, Henry joins the village men
as they dance, wearing headdresses
and capes of leaves that make them look
like green birds as they twirl
and leap,
carrying
human prayers
up toward heaven.
Quickly, I sketch each movement
of the dance, hoping to paint
the bright details
later.
So much of life and art
requires patience.
Will any painting ever
feel complete?
HARRY FRANCK
from the United States of America
Census Enumerator
COUNTING
I came to Panama planning to dig
the Eighth Wonder of the World,
but I was told that white men
should never be seen working
with shovels, so I took a police job,
and now I’ve been transferred
to the census.
I roam the jungle, counting laborers
who live in shanties and those who live
on the run, fugitives who are too angry
to keep working for silver in a system
where they know that others
earn gold.
When islanders see me coming,
they’re afraid of trouble, even though
I can’t arrest them anymore—now
all I need is a record of their names, ages,
homelands, and colors.
The rules of this census confound me.
I’m expected to count white Jamaicans
as dark and every shade of Spaniard
as semi-white, so that Americans
can pretend
there’s only one color
in each country.
How am I supposed to enumerate
this kid with the Cuban accent?
His skin is medium, but his eyes
are green.
And what about that Puerto Rican
scientist, who speaks like a New York
professor,
or the girl who says she doesn’t know
where she was born or who her parents
are—she could be part native, or part French,
Jamaican, Chinese . . .
She could even be part American,
from people who passed through here
way back
in gold rush days.
Counting feels just as impossible
as turning solid mountains
into a ditch.
ANITA
COUNTLESS
No category.
I don’t fit.
No box.
No shape.
No space
for me
in the census enumerator’s
tidy columns
of numbers.
No mark.
No label.
No tag I can wear
that states “enumerated”
and names
my color.
For the first time in my life, I love
being unknown.
MATEO
PAYING WITH MUSIC
I wear my enumerated tag only
for a few minutes,
until the counting man
vanishes from view,
hidden by tangled vines,
and strangler figs, and taunting,
howling, shrieking monkeys.
At Henry’s village wedding, all the drums
and dancing are festive, like a memory
of rhythmic island waves, island shores . . .
For just a moment, I feel a flash of wishing.
After I fled, was Papi happy?
You owe me a song, Henry shouts
as he dances, reminding me
that silver men have nothing else
to give and runaway silver men
have even less.
So I lift my rackety, clattering voice,
and as it joins Anita’s
smoothly flowing melody,
our combined song feels
like a gift received,
instead of given.
AUGUSTO
POSSIBILITIES
Seeing Henry happy and free
and young Mateo so wildly in love,
I start wondering if I will ever
be the settle-down, quiet-down
marrying type.
For now, all I want is exploration.
Painting. Keeping a record of wings,
eggs, and nests, to preserve the beauty
of rare creatures, before this
not-so-impossible-after-all canal
finally floods the entire
butterfly forest.
On paper and canvas, anything
can happen.
Motionless wings spring to life
on museum walls, convincing
generous strangers
in distant cities
that funds must be raised
to create permanent refuges
where trees, flowers, birds, frogs,
mushrooms, and monkeys
stand a chance of survival.
That’s all I plead for—just a chance—
when I write fervent letters to Roosevelt,
whose presidency has ended, so that now
he devotes all his energy to saving
wilderness. He’s become a champion
of national parks and an amateur explorer
as well—I’ve even heard that he’s planning
his own scientific expedition
to the Amazon.
Sometimes, life changes so suddenly
that the future is like a curiosity cabinet,
filled with surprises.
MATEO
MEN REPLACED BY METAL
News from the Serpent Cut
is carried by alarmed travelers.
A train-track-shifting machine
has been invented.
Only nine men are needed
to operate the huge crane car.
Six hundred Spaniards
have abruptly been fired.
The jobs they hated
are gone.
MATEO
RAVENOUS
Fired men roam the jungle,
searching for jobs to earn money
for fare back to Cuba or back
to their own native provinces
in Spain.
Hungry and angry, drunk anarchists
spend their last silver wages on rum
instead of food, so that one evening
when Anita and I are out collecting
herbs, we learn that silver people
can be just as cruel
as gold.
On a swaying rope bridge
above a river churning with crocodiles,
three of my old boxcar roommates
stand blurry-eyed and laughing
as they toss a fighting rooster
down, into the thrashing mass
of ravenous reptiles.
Twisting and snapping, the jaws
of crocodiles gape, rip, and gulp,
as each one seizes a share of the
helpless bird.
A single red feather rises
from the mess, floating like a flag
in a war zone . . .
while Anita steps forward to explain
that the hungry beasts will grow
accustomed to associating humans
with food and they’ll go hunting
upstream, in villages where they’ll
kill and eat chickens, goats, dogs,
or children.
ANITA
WITNESS
Angry people never listen—
all they want is action—
so they ignore me,
and they grab Mateo,
and the
y lift him, trying to toss him
over the whipping, snapping, swaying
ropes.
MATEO
TEETERING
For one horrifying instant,
I feel as if I’m already over the edge
of the perilous rope bridge . . .
but it’s just a bounce
in midair
before I fall back down
to safety,
rescued by brave Anita,
who flourishes her machete,
chasing the mean men
away,
far
Silver People Page 7
