Three Poems

Mocoa

The light sweated on the banana palms.
Mocoa was delirious; the loud, wet
forest knotting the gaps in its own sound.

As the path levelled, the river found a ledge,
its own slight horizon. Every hope of water
shivered white at the bare rock’s touch,

finding its voice in the sudden fall.
All day, the river replayed.
The sun flashed in its open memory.



Flamingos

We stopped for the night at a hostel
with beds of stone, dry plants outside
shuddering the sand from their shoulders.

The little huts, the children, the dogs
lost in the sudden dusk.
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