November 2020
Bio Note: I am a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. For several decades, I and my faithful
traveling companion (a.k.a., knapsack) Rocinante have been traveling through Latin America, listening to the voices
of the pueblos and Earth, and doing literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. My poetry and narratives have been
published in over 180 journals on six continents; and 12 chapbooks of poetry – including Caribbean Nights
(Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, 2017) and On Galápagos Shores
(dancing girl press, 2019).
Drifting Under This Lune
Under the near-new moon
I drift into deep sleep,
drifting, drifting to familiar lands
to a sacred mountain that soon
reveals its naked stone. I weep
to see its splendorous snows replaced by sands.
I drift, I drift past thoughts
of things I’ve done, things yet to do
welling up feelings filled with fraught
welling up feelings of being anew
Drifting under this lune …
Survival
— a poem for two voices
— for Puracé
I.
Who yet wanders these
mountains at night,
beneath a starful heaven?
Do you, puma & bear,
carefully stepping amongst
foul-smelling mines?
Do you, humans,
guns in arms, hunting
liberties?
Do you, spirits
of silent non-history
passed?
II.
Come the morn
these mountains
perhaps are free
beneath the remnants
of last night’s dreams
But then the clouds
of minds awakened gather,
their peaks become
buried, their slopes barren,
cross-hatched by the
human hand
III.
Until the night again falls
& the skies clear
to a million
starry dreams
IV.
Will the wind & rains
erode these mountains –
or the shovels of man?
Will the trembling earth shift
warmth & waters
of thermal pools –
or will dams?
Will the waning of puma
of bear & danta
go with the cycles of
feast & famine –
or with shotguns?
Will the forests
yet survive lightning
strike fires, renewing
amidst showers & sun –
or will chainsaws ... ?
Will pristine snow
yet clothe those
cindery peaks –
or will ... ?
Will this land yet dream
beneath stellar heavens?
Author's Note: Puracé is a National Park in southern Colombia;
danta is a mountain tapir, an endangered species in the park.
Originally published in The Mas Tequila Review (#9, August 2014).
©2020 Lorraine Caputo
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL