Reign, Forest!

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He was convalescing — infirm and abed — 
but by the sortilege of dreams 
he was paddling in a rude canoe 
on the Xingu River, paddling furiously

as if to escape from something terrible 
behind him. Something was behind him, 
something menacing that cast 
his long shadow on the dark water
 
and filled him with great fear, 
and he was too afraid to look behind him. 
Confronting the source of his fear 
was out of the question, at least for now.
 
So he studied the river ahead 
with desperate scrutiny. Its waters 
were liquid obsidian, nearly black 
with tannin from the swamps —
 
the color of the Xingu black beer 
he’d quaffed in Belem on the coast. 
Stobs and cypress knees just below the surface 
created eddies that, for all their diminutive size,

were as ominous as Charybdis — 
or perhaps they were caused by schools 
of marauding piranhas, or the cruising bulk 
of a crocodile, or an arawana.

On either side were high, green walls 
of sound: the stridulations of insects 
and the now near, now distant cacophony 
of howler monkeys, cock-of-the-rocks,

blue and yellow macaws, unnameables
in the forest canopy nearly masking 
the crepitations of sunspot activity. 
He was suddenly aware of how blemished

the sun was, with its dark sarcomas 
that moved about like floating islands 
in a lake of fire, of which the river itself 
had become a fiery prominence.

It was a scene right out of the Carboniferous 
era. His peripheral vision brought 
fleeting glimpses of eryops and edaphosaurs 
moving slowly along the banks of the river,

but they vanished under his scrutiny. 
The moon was just behind and slightly above 
his left shoulder, and against the backdrop 
of its lurid eruptions dark shapes were winging 

their way to earth. The jungle was burning 
behind him! In extremis, he dove suddenly 
into the unknown waters and swam as deep 
as he could. He could breath — and he was 

swimming with such joy and such rapture 
that it was very much like flying ... 
toward a beautiful blue world 
where a dark river flowed. A small boat 

floated on the water, and all around it 
the river boiled red with frenzied, feeding piranhas. 
But he was quickly distracted by the gorgeous 
effulgence of another, unblemished Sun,
 
and so flew up to meet it. And at that moment 
a Waikà baby was born in the jungle, 
with eyes as black as the Xingu 
and a heart that would burn with passion

for its vanishing home. She opened her eyes 
that were also the eyes of the jungle, and smiled.

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