Beneath Buriti Palms, my outstretched hands
caught fruits macaws dislodged from high leaf fans.
By carolled forest choir, I set my fire
and watched as stars illumed its thin smoke gyres.
A tree branch held a nimble-limbed Margay.
Invasive bugs inflicted nagging pain.
My anger was an anodyne to pain
and powered the machete in my hands.
When evening fell again, the sleek Margay
was watching parrots' vibrant feathered fans.
I turned; a jaguar's eyes were sulphur gyres.
It leapt and streaked my skin with liquid fire.
We spun as one and sprawled across the fire.
The jaguar fled; my body blazed with pain.
Unconsciousness forewarned with nauseous gyres.
I dressed my bloody wounds with shaking hands.
In darkness, insects swarmed like lovesick fans
and watching all was silver-eyed Margay.
The distant yet companionable Margay
was witness to my trial by fever's fire.
By dawn my skin was flushed with spreading fans.
Infection weighed my limbs with drubbing pain.
The strangler figs closed in like murderous hands.
I pressed on through lianas' tangled gyres.
Then madness pulled me down in drowning gyres.
I tripped on bu*tress roots and found Margay.
It spoke and stroked my brow with soothing hands
but all around the forest crackled fire.
A spray of water cooled my world of pain.
I walked into a waterfall's limpid fans.
I woke and felt a palm leaf's gentle fans
within a woven home's ascending gyres.
The voice which broke my shell of muted pain
belonged to Edelweiss and not Margay.
She smiled and said my wounds were cleansed by fire.
L's looking for Hope, she said, patting my hands.
In dreams, Margay and I raft river gyres,
cut thorny vines with hands which feel no pain
and plunge through flaming emerald fans of fire.