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  • Getting Away, and: Painted Cart with No Oxen, and: Canopy Walk, and: Slick Trail, and: Tucked Deep among Tangled Roots, and: Losing the Pink Bananas
  • Peggy Shumaker (bio)

Getting Away

We sidewind inside cloudsalong ridgelines dividingwaters that shed eastfrom waters that shed west—

el páramo, which I knowonly from Pedro, the Páramo [End Page 60] from Comala, hometown so hotdead folks arriving in Hell

go back to get their blankets.In the Talamancas, rufusnaped sparrows shove mashed-upworms beak to beak.

We glide down, down, towardthe Tárcoles River, wheretwenty crocs per kilometermake their ancient living

except here, at the bridge,where dozens of huge onessnap and shove, chomp downjunk that people throw.

Around the bend, spoonbills,rosy and plump, strainrivermuck. By treadless tireswood storks hunker, shoulders hunched.

Quick plovers and stiltspace cuneiform messages.Green herons call, calldownriver, then follow

their voices. Loneroyal egret paces very neartwo half-submergedrelics plastered in mud.

They're sharp-toothed, zapfast, fuerte. But shecan liftup out of silt and soar. [End Page 61]

Painted Cart with No Oxen

Legend has it that in ancestralforest under a waning moonchurch carpenters cutbitter cedar for a new altar,

bitter cedar for new saints.They stacked chopped logsoutside their workshop,curled into their hammocks.

That fingernail of lightlet the stars shine brighter.Two former altar boyscrept up, rolled the logs

into the river. They rode themthe long way home.When the wood dried,they built a shelter

for their mother, a table,a bench, and thencrafted an oxcart sturdierthan anyone had ever seen.

On it their sister paintedcurls, feathers,their mother's favorite flowers,triangles in all colors,

silk threads and broad swaths,a circle of pompiniado,colors of bird, stone,volcano, ocean. [End Page 62]

Priests warned from the pulpitthat coffee plantswould bear no cherries,that fish would slip out

of mended nets,that milk cows wouldgo dry and chickensstop laying—all this

and roasting in hellwould befallwhoever had stolenthe sacred wood.

But the former altar boysknew from older storiesthat the roots of thebitter cedar speak

through their branchesto the stars. And the stars,brighter tonight, heardtheir prayers, their thanks

for shelter, for a table,for a cart of many colorsthat they hauled themselvesbringing in their mother's harvest,

their crippled neighbor'sharvest, more coffeethan ever, hauled without helpto a town downstream.

San José,a carpenter too, watched [End Page 63] all this from on high.He liked the spirit

of these brothers in wood.He sent them on a detouron the way home, pasta farm where twin oxen

had just been born. They tradedthe promise of haulingfor the newborns, loaded themonto fresh leaves in the cajón,

pulled with their own musclesin the last light of the stars,pulled twin oxen in the painted cartback to their fields, back home.

Canopy Walk

Bridges give,swing underfoot, holdus suspended

eighty feet upamong toweringrainforest treetops.

Twelve at oncecross—stepsshudder— [End Page 64]

bridge rippleseach boot,shifts

solid assumptions,our weight no longerwhere we planted.

Over the edge,strangler figstangle, never-

ending lawsuitsstarving outroot and branch

of one that liftedtoward lighttiny-rooted

epiphytethat took overthis host's life.

Now, reaching down,the bountiful figsinks in, offers

shelter, food,its questionableexample

to all creaturesfrom fern-gladeforest floor [End Page 65]

through each storyup into canopy,where trees rarely touch.

Slick Trail

Starless night'ssteady downpour

we savor,much-scarred

familiarswaking

with love touch,freshened,

risinglipmoist,

voyagersvia rainforest

aromas, trailscascading

seven poolsbelow us, [End Page 66]

watershiverhummingbirds

snowcap, femalescooping, shaking,

snowcap, malequietly bathing,

third pooltheirs alone.

Each pondreserved,

one mirrorper species.

Tucked Deep among Tangled Roots

In mangrove swamp,one tree flowers.

One tree opensin white blossom.

And one bird,one...

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