1.
Night rain arrives
from time faraway
fraught with
tears.
Glowering in
mournfulness,
bowing to howling
wind,
she darkens stars
and moon.
In sinister
whispers
her prosody
intensifies.
The shadows are
all ears.
Then as she came
she is gone,
untraced in
eyeless silence
between
wakefulness and dream.
2.
Every bivouac
it was the same
dream:
a roughly human
form two-legged and armed
wading empty of
matter through
the plenitude of
night.
Where nothing
meets nothing
there is electric
skin.
He named it
negative man
after a childhood
bogey
haunting a closet.
At the top of the
stairs
behind that
door—ghosts.
3.
It wasn't until he
had been
in the northern
rainforest
for nearly six
weeks that
he came face to
face with Wolf.
He sat straight up
out of deep sleep.
Wolf was watching
yellow-eyed, wiry and unscrupled.
In retrospect he
understood the glance:
wholly ferocious
corporeality whose every strand acts as one.
But Wolf waits and
watches,
calculates and
decides:
if not this night,
some other
in endless time
ahead and behind.
4.
Coming up from the
gorge
smelling of
forest,
breathing forest,
drowning
unpersoned and quiet in it,
not even hearing
one's own footsteps--
straight into
Deer's motionless stare
not six feet away.
There was no
decision to freeze:
just two
demobilized for infinite minutes.
He smiles and
raises his hand.
Deer bounds
effortlessly to the left,
indifferent under
uncounted points.
5.
Somewhere in
Québec
after midnight
he walked into the
ancient Roman village,
first century or
thereabouts, no doubt French,
thus underneath it
all somewhere in Gaul.
Stone farmhouses
and outbuildings,
tools left leaning
by small stone sheds.
The village slept.
Dogs did not
bother to bark.
They trusted one
another through the night.
At last he is
permitted to pass.
Later he talks to
his father long distance.
“Would
you like to be a senator?” he says.
“A
senator? What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?”
“Not
that kind of senator,” he says, “and not in these obscene times.”
6.
Blizzard begins
like a sneak thief
stealing off with
the drab ground.
Soon trees are
wearing white wool.
The cosmos is
slowly muffled.
He walks quietly
in heavy boots.
Every step the
world gives way
a fraction of an
inch, protesting softly.
7.
Half wild dogs
are
the most dangerous.
They run in packs.
They hunt.
They are not
afraid of man
because men do not
know
their
unseen side.
He
walks up from the
highway
to
the summit of a flat-topped hill
and
is ambushed by a perfect triangle,
lead
dog facing him.
He
stands stock still
gripping
the walking stick.
They
return the favor,
which
is: not
one inch more.
There
is no transcript,
for
nothing is said—no word or bark.
He
backs slowly between the pickets toward the rear,
right
and left, awaiting their captain's orders.
Before
he turns down the grade
he
smiles to himself.
They
watch him all the way
back
down to the road.
The
captain nods and they disappear.
E. A. Costa June 8, 2014 Granada, Nicaragua
