Silver People Read online

  there’s freedom,

  exploration,

  art, science,

  wild wings . . .

  HENRY

  A NEW LIFE

  Native villagers accept me.

  I soon learn that the blue frogs

  I saw in those sky ponds

  are useful for poisoning

  the sharp tips

  of darts.

  If I stay here, I’ll have to learn

  how to hunt with a blowgun,

  and I’ll learn to speak

  a new language.

  If I stay in this misty heat, I’ll wear

  hardly any clothes, and I’ll paint

  my skin with the juice of red

  achiote berries to keep

  biting mosquitoes

  from killing me with fevers.

  If I stay, I’ll have to forget

  that old dream of buying farmland

  at home.

  Home is here now.

  Home is a hut propped on stilts,

  as protection against floods

  and crocodiles.

  I try not to think of Momma,

  waiting for a letter,

  waiting for silver.

  ANITA

  MONKEY SCHOOL

  This morning, a baby howler

  slid down a branch and reached

  for my hand with his small fingers.

  It was a tender moment,

  his face almost human,

  the eyes so intelligent.

  Now it’s evening, and the little howler

  has returned to his family, but I’ve

  already made friends with another

  funny monkey, a skinny capuchin,

  like the ones that are chained

  and trained by organ grinders

  in Silver Town.

  She sits in a leafy nest, sipping

  from the wet fur of her long tail.

  When the fur is dry, she dips

  the tail into a sky pond

  and sips one more time,

  never descending low enough

  to risk touching the river

  where crocodiles

  wait.

  Quietly, the little monkey and I

  sit together in a treetop, listening.

  Learning.

  ONE HOWLER MONKEY

  TWO VOICES

  I’M YOUNG, BUT I LEARN

  HOW TO THROW MY NOISY VOICE

  ACROSS TREETOPS, LIKE A CLOUD

  OR A BIRD, REACHING FAR . . .

  and then I reach down

  with my arm, hand, knuckles,

  fingertips, reaching just far enough

  to touch

  a stranger’s hand,

  a stranger’s small,

  quiet voice.

  When I leap back up to my family,

  I remember the human song,

  AND I HOWL.

  THE CAPUCHIN MONKEY

  CLEVER

  I’m small and smart

  I know how to leap

  or perch on a branch

  dip my tail into a pond

  sip

  from the tip

  of the fur

  never risking

  the muddy shore

  where jaws

  and teeth

  lurk.

  THE GIANT SWALLOWTAIL BUTTERFLIES

  SALT

  We’re not afraid of slow, wide jaws.

  We land on crocodile

  or peccary

  or tapir

  skin,

  nose,

  eyes . . .

  We need to sip

  the salt of earth

  wherever we find

  minerals,

  sweat,

  tears.

  THE KING VULTURE

  DEATH

  Death is king

  in the mud

  on steep slopes

  Death is food

  in the heat

  in the rain

  Death is life

  in my beak

  down my throat

  Death in my belly

  every day

  all day.

  THE TREES

  LIFE

  So many of us are gone now

  that survivors

  struggle

  to grow

  enough green

  for hungry birds and monkeys

  who leave our branches stripped

  of leaves and twigs and fruit

  even though we need

  their help

  to move

  seeds . . .

  MATEO

  BIRD ART

  Last year, Augusto finally

  abandoned his contract.

  He has made arrangements

  to sell paintings of birds to museums

  far away—my paintings along with his,

  as if he understands that I am already

  a true artist, capable of showing

  the beauty of wild creatures

  in flight.

  I find it hard to believe

  that in the old days, bird artists

  killed their subjects, then stuffed

  and posed them, instead of painting

  life.

  ANITA

  UNCERTAINTY

  Each sight in the forest is always new.

  Mateo paints bellbirds, woodpeckers,

  and shining honeycreepers,

  while I climb massive ceiba trees

  with buttress roots

  so immense that they look

  like stone fortresses,

  and then I climb walking trees

  with skinny

  stilt roots

  that make

  them look

  like dancers.

  All of it seems so permanent, until

  we pass through areas where logging

  has left nothing but mud, dust, mud . . .

  MATEO

  FOREST NIGHTS

  At dusk, there’s the blinking flash

  of fireflies and the steady light

  of phosphorescent mushrooms.

  Together, Anita and I wonder

  how anything as ordinary

  as an insect, or a fungus,

  can glow

  in the dark.

  Will every detail of nature

  always seem

  so mysterious?

  HENRY

  LOVE IS A NEW LANGUAGE

  I have found my own sweet sweet

  bride. I’m going to marry a village girl

  from the Emberá tribe.

  No one from the Serpent Cut ever

  thinks about the native people

  who truly belong to this butterfly forest.

  No one wonders what Panama was like

  before the logging, digging, hauling,

  and landslides . . .

  but now, so many islanders have run away

  from silver jobs that languages are blending—

  English, Spanish, and French, all mixed up

  with Chibchan and Chocó.

  It’s as if we’re creating an entirely

  new culture.

  MATEO

  VISITING HENRY

  The indios live in open huts

  without walls, each floor a platform

  propped up on stilts, high above

  rainy-season floods

  and roaming crocodiles.

  If a notched log leans against

  the side of a thatched hut, I know

  that strangers are welcome to climb up

  and visit, but if the log ladder lies flat

  on the ground, Anita and I walk on quietly

  while villagers sleep

  in their peacefully

  swaying

  hammocks.

  The roofs are dry palm fronds,

  the floors covered with woven reeds.

  Faces are painted with red and black

  designs—circles and looped lines

&n
bsp; made from insect-repelling bixa juice.

  On feast days, Henry joins the village men

  as they dance, wearing headdresses

  and capes of leaves that make them look

  like green birds as they twirl

  and leap,

  carrying

  human prayers

  up toward heaven.

  Quickly, I sketch each movement

  of the dance, hoping to paint

  the bright details

  later.

  So much of life and art

  requires patience.

  Will any painting ever

  feel complete?

  HARRY FRANCK

  from the United States of America

  Census Enumerator

  COUNTING

  I came to Panama planning to dig

  the Eighth Wonder of the World,

  but I was told that white men

  should never be seen working

  with shovels, so I took a police job,

  and now I’ve been transferred

  to the census.

  I roam the jungle, counting laborers

  who live in shanties and those who live

  on the run, fugitives who are too angry

  to keep working for silver in a system

  where they know that others

  earn gold.

  When islanders see me coming,

  they’re afraid of trouble, even though

  I can’t arrest them anymore—now

  all I need is a record of their names, ages,

  homelands, and colors.

  The rules of this census confound me.

  I’m expected to count white Jamaicans

  as dark and every shade of Spaniard

  as semi-white, so that Americans

  can pretend

  there’s only one color

  in each country.

  How am I supposed to enumerate

  this kid with the Cuban accent?

  His skin is medium, but his eyes

  are green.

  And what about that Puerto Rican

  scientist, who speaks like a New York

  professor,

  or the girl who says she doesn’t know

  where she was born or who her parents

  are—she could be part native, or part French,

  Jamaican, Chinese . . .

  She could even be part American,

  from people who passed through here

  way back

  in gold rush days.

  Counting feels just as impossible

  as turning solid mountains

  into a ditch.

  ANITA

  COUNTLESS

  No category.

  I don’t fit.

  No box.

  No shape.

  No space

  for me

  in the census enumerator’s

  tidy columns

  of numbers.

  No mark.

  No label.

  No tag I can wear

  that states “enumerated”

  and names

  my color.

  For the first time in my life, I love

  being unknown.

  MATEO

  PAYING WITH MUSIC

  I wear my enumerated tag only

  for a few minutes,

  until the counting man

  vanishes from view,

  hidden by tangled vines,

  and strangler figs, and taunting,

  howling, shrieking monkeys.

  At Henry’s village wedding, all the drums

  and dancing are festive, like a memory

  of rhythmic island waves, island shores . . .

  For just a moment, I feel a flash of wishing.

  After I fled, was Papi happy?

  You owe me a song, Henry shouts

  as he dances, reminding me

  that silver men have nothing else

  to give and runaway silver men

  have even less.

  So I lift my rackety, clattering voice,

  and as it joins Anita’s

  smoothly flowing melody,

  our combined song feels

  like a gift received,

  instead of given.

  AUGUSTO

  POSSIBILITIES

  Seeing Henry happy and free

  and young Mateo so wildly in love,

  I start wondering if I will ever

  be the settle-down, quiet-down

  marrying type.

  For now, all I want is exploration.

  Painting. Keeping a record of wings,

  eggs, and nests, to preserve the beauty

  of rare creatures, before this

  not-so-impossible-after-all canal

  finally floods the entire

  butterfly forest.

  On paper and canvas, anything

  can happen.

  Motionless wings spring to life

  on museum walls, convincing

  generous strangers

  in distant cities

  that funds must be raised

  to create permanent refuges

  where trees, flowers, birds, frogs,

  mushrooms, and monkeys

  stand a chance of survival.

  That’s all I plead for—just a chance—

  when I write fervent letters to Roosevelt,

  whose presidency has ended, so that now

  he devotes all his energy to saving

  wilderness. He’s become a champion

  of national parks and an amateur explorer

  as well—I’ve even heard that he’s planning

  his own scientific expedition

  to the Amazon.

  Sometimes, life changes so suddenly

  that the future is like a curiosity cabinet,

  filled with surprises.

  MATEO

  MEN REPLACED BY METAL

  News from the Serpent Cut

  is carried by alarmed travelers.

  A train-track-shifting machine

  has been invented.

  Only nine men are needed

  to operate the huge crane car.

  Six hundred Spaniards

  have abruptly been fired.

  The jobs they hated

  are gone.

  MATEO

  RAVENOUS

  Fired men roam the jungle,

  searching for jobs to earn money

  for fare back to Cuba or back

  to their own native provinces

  in Spain.

  Hungry and angry, drunk anarchists

  spend their last silver wages on rum

  instead of food, so that one evening

  when Anita and I are out collecting

  herbs, we learn that silver people

  can be just as cruel

  as gold.

  On a swaying rope bridge

  above a river churning with crocodiles,

  three of my old boxcar roommates

  stand blurry-eyed and laughing

  as they toss a fighting rooster

  down, into the thrashing mass

  of ravenous reptiles.

  Twisting and snapping, the jaws

  of crocodiles gape, rip, and gulp,

  as each one seizes a share of the

  helpless bird.

  A single red feather rises

  from the mess, floating like a flag

  in a war zone . . .

  while Anita steps forward to explain

  that the hungry beasts will grow

  accustomed to associating humans

  with food and they’ll go hunting

  upstream, in villages where they’ll

  kill and eat chickens, goats, dogs,

  or children.

  ANITA

  WITNESS

  Angry people never listen—

  all they want is action—

  so they ignore me,

  and they grab Mateo,

  and the
y lift him, trying to toss him

  over the whipping, snapping, swaying

  ropes.

  MATEO

  TEETERING

  For one horrifying instant,

  I feel as if I’m already over the edge

  of the perilous rope bridge . . .

  but it’s just a bounce

  in midair

  before I fall back down

  to safety,

  rescued by brave Anita,

  who flourishes her machete,

  chasing the mean men

  away,

  far