Uros
You
are tired after ten hours on the luxury train
Taxis and dark-sky boat to the floating islands
Tonight’s bed has twenty-four kilos of blankets
You cannot sleep for the flapping corrugated scraps
Clacking and warping to the milky way
Yet
it’s perfect--your body is saying--says a blue
Blip somewhere on earth that is your body
We are weaving sapphire love in the hovel of a room
Unabashed as the sheet of stars across Lake Titicaca
Aloft, upon wobbly mats of totora reeds
The
island waves. They must dream of cutting
Hoisting, drying, laying, laying reeds to stay afloat
Could it be that feet sink in with every step?
It could be his knock at 8:37am, handing me my phone
Which has charged in his hut, or how he tells me
I
have received 4 calls in the middle of his night
It could be Mateo, who is three, wearing my glasses
Whose face is wide as a handmade quinoa cake
Or his sister, Geraldin, in a dance between Mateo
And adulthood. Or, it could be the grandfather on the roof
Or
is he the father?—dismantling
boards to move in a day
Sounding in the lake breezes like andean birds
Or last night, climbing the teetering ladder for a
Dissertation, above the lapping waves, on sky
An
entire island of reeds blown by the wind, creaking
It is to say, disorientation, and you have slept late
into the natural float of time, and coca tea, and reeds
Have been gathered and the man at the apex must
Descend to rap on your door with your phone
Taxis and dark-sky boat to the floating islands
Tonight’s bed has twenty-four kilos of blankets
You cannot sleep for the flapping corrugated scraps
Clacking and warping to the milky way
Blip somewhere on earth that is your body
We are weaving sapphire love in the hovel of a room
Unabashed as the sheet of stars across Lake Titicaca
Aloft, upon wobbly mats of totora reeds
Hoisting, drying, laying, laying reeds to stay afloat
Could it be that feet sink in with every step?
It could be his knock at 8:37am, handing me my phone
Which has charged in his hut, or how he tells me
It could be Mateo, who is three, wearing my glasses
Whose face is wide as a handmade quinoa cake
Or his sister, Geraldin, in a dance between Mateo
And adulthood. Or, it could be the grandfather on the roof
Sounding in the lake breezes like andean birds
Or last night, climbing the teetering ladder for a
Dissertation, above the lapping waves, on sky
It is to say, disorientation, and you have slept late
into the natural float of time, and coca tea, and reeds
Have been gathered and the man at the apex must
Descend to rap on your door with your phone