Rain Forest
Poetry

At dawn and all through the day
the wattled bellbird gongs
as if appointing the moments
for faunal instinct, floral bloom.
One by one, the strange coevolution
of leaf and caterpillar,
flower and hummingbird,
herbivore and carnivore resumes,
and all that exists either drinks or drips.
Sunset comes early to the wet mountain
and ebbs in the long blue shadows
of quetzal feathers or dangling sloths,
in the strange devolution of day and night
and their infinite exploitations of disguise,
where the clear night-frog harbors
its conspicuous heart.