Through the unhurried night, in flip flops and shorts,
he walks back to his village.

He knows where he is by the smells: the pachote, the pink
shower tree, the hedge of dracenas, the swaths of grass and dirt, nameless
and unique like fingerprints.
The too pretty stars with their Latin names are of no use.

Behind the ear, the cigarette is for later, but not too late.
By 15 he had his knife fight, lost a couple of teeth,
and has tattoos to trumpet loves, all forfeited.
By 20 he will have been in jail and by 30 he will lose his father and, unknowing,
will become one.
By 40 he will travel enough to make a small fortune, to squander it, to learn
where home is, and to return.
By 60, his health, luck, and inheritance, like his hair, will recede,
enlarging a place filled with tulip trees and boredom that he will not resent.

Now he shuffles along, unseen, a basketball in equipoise between elbow and hip.
From time to time, the clicking of dart frogs, the screeching of a kinkajou,
the howling of a monkey.

By the time he arrives, he will knife a coati.
By the time he arrives, he will smell and let go of the red ginger.
By the time he arrives, nobody will be waiting for him.

Maniacally, the crickets keep stitching the night, which nothing can fasten.

______

Pensive, January 2025