Tropical Forest Reverie

Easy as a waterfall
flows through our ears
the light of another country
illuminates the shiver
and the moisture
in our shoes
sinking into leaves and early
morning mud
in a high forest holding
to an incline whose grip
becomes slack in a storm.
The law here once ordered
land to be cleared
for grazing, and the hills
bear scars as they fade
from green to green to a colour
between foliage and sky.
Then the law said trees
were not to be cut
but left with their crowns
disentangling themselves
from the clouds
that come daily to wrap
the forest in a tropical chill
where a Sooty-capped Bush Tanager
lands on a branch
with a tease in its call
while a hummingbird with fire
on its throat
hangs like a drop of water
in indecisive air
above the valley.

      *****

A path threaded through
long grass and ferns
leads to an opening
where it marries a road
and climbs to the peak
of a village where kingbirds
perched on wires
watch for insects
trapped in sunlight. Up we go
and back down, deep
into a thicket with a stream
crawling over stones, with shadows
layered and the wet sounds
of invisible life soaking
into the trunks
of trees soft as darkness.
With a flashlight
leading our way by a beam
like a blind man’s cane
we cross a slender bridge
to find our way back
to a house of bamboo whose roof
is a drum in the rain
that batters it all night
while the water runs down
to the ocean and sleep
washes over the land.

      *****

A bridge stands heavy in the space
between the past
and the present. Its construction
is iron sheets with cable strung
from bank to bank
of a river that carries words
away and brings them back with new
meaning: forest as a force
that grows as fast as it absorbs
a rainstorm; horizon as a hidden
element in landscape; and roots
as a shallow tangle
three feet deep and holding
massive trunks
to the earth. After crossing it
we look back and see
our former selves waving
from the other side.

      *****

Here’s a snake so thin
it can stand up on your hand
with its body stiff
like a check mark beside an item
on a wish list
carried to this point
where the ground underfoot
almost slips away
and the birds move in flocks
of so many colours
we struggle to identify them
as their cries are embedded
in the foliage close by.
Here’s a print
made overnight
by a cat we’d like to see but
not meet face to face.
With a breath held
coiled inside the chest
we follow a curve
in the forest trail as it slithers
from where we cannot see
what caused a leaf to slide
along a beam of light
to a point so narrow
only a voice can pass through.
From here we make our way
by listening
and by touch
as our hands find the colours
of flowers holding water
inside their folds
but never of the toxic brightness
on tiny frogs
like liquid
on the surfaces of leaves.

      *****

When light has soaked
into moss
animals follow scents
slowly through darkness
with sounds in the key of night.
Nectar bats
come for the sweetness
and stroke our cheeks
as they pass
with the breath of their
hovering wings.

David Chorlton has lived in Arizona since 1978 when he moved from Europe. He became enamoured of the desert, which little by little entered his poetry. His book Waiting for the Quetzal (March Street Press) moves from that Arizona landscape to Costa Rica as experienced in his first visit there. In 2007 he returned, and the poem featured here took root.

Email: David Chorlton

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