Brazil
Vanishing sheep and goats capture
the beauty of a vanishing planet, explored by sea
or air . . . native people
rebound in the blue of the Amazon forest,
hard edge of darkness, wrist watches
and rings forever lost
street kids, Danish philosophers, and oil company
biologists suddenly appeared in Bolivia
shortly after the World Cup
while the rare glimpses of blue,
a canopy raft, canopy sledge, centenary palm
not so widespread as in southern
Brazil, including Belo Horizonte,
the blue and rose periods . . .
wary natives dodge from sight, paving
stones on a rigid man's body, crack them
apart with a sledge
"Crystal Blue Persuasion"
and other songs of the rainbow
world, across snowless
mountains, communities fretting
about disasters and disorders,
diminishing supplies of
books, candles,
bells . . . a modicum of humor, rainforest
razzmatazz
small quantity, modicum, trace, hint,
minimum; vanishing point; material point,
atom, particle, molecule, corpuscle, point,
speck, dot, mote, jot, iota, ace
of the pan, making a slope paper, cardboard tissue rolls,
tape, blue avocados, bananas, bamboo,
black pepper,
with a talent for vanishing from southern Mexico into Amazonian
Brazil, flying steeply up a rocky gradient,
certain that the power of blue light clearly against
clouds now low and thin, tents pitched on . . .
the unexplained flycatcher, sliding down a jungle slope
for a while, prior to disappearing . . .
--Halvard Johnson
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