Suzanne Noguere
August 2002

With their heads


jutting like gargoyles from the trees, the snakes
lie still as statues where the monkeys caper
until for one too young there is no escape or
even tearing those mosaic coils; it takes
the cawing the macaw in gaudy splendor makes
from its towering tree to warn the tapir
that the scent it has not sensed, that weight and shape are
the jaguar. Terror-struck the tapir stakes
its life on racing for the river, where
the scarlet ibis with its eyes this dark—
two specks of coal to fuel a feathered flare—
full now and fleetingly released from slaughter,
unbends its wings and neck from that double arc,
becoming air as the fish fits into water.

From Whirling Round the Sun, Midmarch Arts Press, 1996.