El Yunque

we walk through layers of green light
upward along the muddy trail
rivulets run among rounded brown stones
and red dirt under boots
dripping
from leaves, from the air
small frogs sing
vines entwine the tree trunks
that tower over us
in an enclosure of softly glowing
darkness
sudden splashes of red blooms
like bursting stars
hang suspended,
leaning out,
wanton and unrestrained,
among the myriad green leaves

reaching the ridgeline we suddenly
break out into open sky, bright
above stunted and gnarled trunks
pressed back against the earth
as if by seasons of great wind,
aware that we now
tower over a diminutive
fairy forest of tiny, bent trees,
huddling undergrowth

and looking out into that precipitous vastness—
the wall of trees that held us missing—
a panic of vertigo overtakes me
I press back into the roughness
and solidity of stone outcropping
frightened by my desire
to walk out upon the sea of fog
that laps the steep slope of forest
and lines the valley between ridgelines,
so gunmetal and opaque
it invites a step

like the slow heave
of a soft grey ocean,
under bright and limitless sky,
the dense fog shifts
revealing across the gap
an improbable periscope,
a stone tower
thrusting up through the
grey and the
endless green

a simple gesture that restores
my bearing, my feet planted
under me again on soft red earth
and again I hear
the rustle of countless shining leaves
the frogs singing
patter of lizards
my breath



Photo by RiffRaff