Waiting for Pat: Ranomafana, 1989

This is a 'waiting poem' and describes the time that I was lost in a rainforest in Madagascar at night. All ended well we did eventually find Pat and our way back to the camp.

Act 1 : The Rainforest in Daylight
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An azure sky is suspended above the canopy.

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 A crowd of vines struggles for a view of the sun.

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Silver, silken threads ooze from the seamstress’s spinnerets.


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A water droplet forms on the tip of a purposefully designed leaf.


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The leach inches across a stage of unprotected skin, hunting for sustenance.


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Insects count the seconds to the intermission in a cacophony of minute voices.


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The first strand of the silken net is secured in place by the seamstress.


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A droplet falls to nourish the orchestra below.



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An unseen eye swivels to survey the audience.

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Sifakas announce the next act with a series of sharp trumpeting calls.

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A woodpecker provides percussion.

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The silken architect is almost done with her design.

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The sky is pigmented with a cherry iridescence.

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Insects quieten, their performance ends at sundown.


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With a snap, dusk’s curtains clap shut.




Intermission

Diurnal characters recede into the darkness and are replaced by a cast of night creatures.





Act II: The Rainforest in the dark.

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Dusk’s silence is rudely interrupted with the tree frog’s tympanic chorus.


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The day’s colors drop to reveal the camouflaged owner of the eye: his skin releasing the diurnal light
in a luminescent glow.

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Under darkness the numbing jaws of the leach savors it’s secret meal in a moist place.

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A second water droplet forms with the forest’s transpirations.

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A cast of Microcibis enter the stage with their hypnotic eye-shine.


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Distant sheet-lightening creates strobe-like flashes of light.

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Sliver clouds slide across the moon’s surface.


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The sated leach plummets to the ground: uncoagulated blood dribbles from the dining site.

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An Aye aye’s boney finger scratches adding to the sound track.

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The seamstress waits in the wings.

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A second droplet is released to quench a hoard of tiny, night acrobats.

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The net wobbles with supper: the seamstress rushes to suck the juices of the translucent exoskeleton.

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The forest band continues to play.



End of scene I: Pat has not appeared and we decide to find our way back to camp without a her.

Reviews

[Dayran]

A waiting poem that spins a web, hoping to put together all the puzzles so as to make it a nice whole picture. Minerva would have been proud.

The forests throbs with communication of eyes, sounds and movement and the observer continues in a fashion that its all so very mysterious. She receives them all in her person and asks the proverbial ' what is it trying to say?' An approach to self understanding from the world around us. I like.

[Britannia]

Thanks Dayran, Glad you liked it, it is a very fond memory.