A Lonesome Planet Breathes

A Lonesome Planet Breathes      
           
1

     The smoke from a forest being burned for tobacco cultivation hovers over the fields. Men gather at the saloon to smoke cigars and drink beer. A gray-haired man sits in the center of the room with a gaze as though collecting his thoughts. I see into the crystal clarity of his eyes and approach him. He tells me of the mystery of time which flows like a river through the forest of dreams.
     He shares his memory of the crescent of Quonset huts where babies nurse from their mother’s breast. It is the twilight of magic he says. He heard the voices of the planet there his story unfolds. Birds tell stories of impending storms. Trees speak of ancient memories. They sing a melody of timeless beauty. Words are spoken in the rush of a breeze. Rain is foretold in the scent of the air. All this is his gift of words to me, an accountant from a land of winter snow.
     The forest people’s senses are interwoven in a tapestry of smell, touch, sound, and sight. The blood-red sunset is like a clap of thunder. Golden arcs of sunshine pour out of father sky to touch mother earth like a husband touching his wife. I thought Griots had faded into history. But here is a living breathing one sharing his wisdom for beer.
     The planet breathes, dreams, and cries until the language of life grows silent. The songs of the river and forest fade into the night wind. The stars grow dim in the sodium light. Birdsong is supplanted by pixilated people who babble in boxes. He closes with an oaken voice, deep and gravelly like a smoker who could use a cigarette. So I hand him one of mine.
     I reach out to him from across the distance to make a request. “Would you be interested in being my guide? I need someone who knows the backcountry to take me upriver.” The old man’s wordless nod serves as an acceptance.
     We steadily paddle our pirogue in a lazy glide across the quiet waters of the Congo River. The misty river is dappled in gold. Bamboo creaks in the warm wet breeze. Thatched huts form crescent on the bank. We are carried by current among floating leaves. Our oars splash softly into the coffee-colored stream. We follow the artery of the forest like a tiny corpuscle seeking the source, the heart of the jungle. We land our pirogue and follow hippo tracks on the trail to their source of fruit which we also have a sweet tooth for.
     We cross a tributary of the main stream and are waist deep in this branch of the Congo. My guide is a jungle Griot in whose wake I wade. Tropicbirds sing us closer to the heart of magic where forest spirits dwell and deep into chimpanzee land.
     Steeped in ancient lore the old Griot tells me of the sacred trees which he knows like the lifeline of his palm. He tells me of olden times when his tribe gathered to remember their ancestors by his oaken voice which is still strong as the current. I follow him into deeper wisdom under the green canopy which is our shade from father sun until we set foot on land again.

2

     We reach a clearing circled by plantains heavy with fruit. A lazy warmth sneaks into my tired muscles. The old man sits like an African Buddha on a mat of banana leaves. I find my place in life under the shadows of palm trees which play like children on the dusty forest floor.
     My back conforms to the bamboo wall with my seat resting on elephant footprints. His words spell my destiny and teach me a quiet way of being with only the sounds of animals as my teacher.
     He takes a mango out of the pouch which hangs from his neck. With a pocket knife, he divides it into two and our meal is shared. As a light rain cools our skin, he raises his hands and smiles. And I watch the earth come alive again.
     After the rain, we walk on. The cool scent of menthol rises from a eucalyptus plantation. After the raindrop ballet, the fields are soaked in the misty breath of Africa which our bare feet drink through pores like holy water from a sky which sings love. We breathe into our berried branches the aromatic exhalations of the gift from green.
     Champagne bubbles of oxygen scented with mint send love letters for my lips to open to the kiss of vapor from heaven. An invisible angel of air teaches me to breathe again.  
     The gum tree fragrance evanesces into cotton cirrus in rows like clouds sunken to earth or alpine powder for kids to make snowmen. But the harvest needs little hands because the white ribbons are not made of ice crystals and play is an uncle with chocolate bars who visits only at Christmas.
     So I tread on feet of clay in the shoe prints of the old man. Like an upland gorilla, descended from the misty mountains, I survey the new territory of a river world of the lowlands where strange metal crawlers move like insects. The scene is foreign to my eyes bathed in green.
     The Griot’s stride grows like grasses as my steps take me further from silicon chips and liquid crystal. My gait takes me into a chlorophyll world where only the wind dreams us into an oval universe with thick walls of food for the long dark night. I find myself afloat in a sea of milk to be born out of the cosmic coconut. I follow the old man’s lead, step out of my shoes, and onto the soft soil of life. My bare feet touch the earth like a lover. The sun on my face soothes my troubled soul. I feel naked as a newborn child.
     We walk in the woods where the trumpet of howler monkeys is an arboreal melody and they swing between the tree branches stirring my ancestral memories in an echo of a primeval dream-time. I am an ape once again looking down from a tree at a cheetah whose eyes stalk me. He flexes his paws, about to dig his claws into the bark in a hunter’s climb.
     My earthbound body finds me before a green zebra fruit fresh from Eden’s garden and tended by an African Eve whose bare hands and body dig into the organic soil. She fills her hours getting kissed by the heavenly gold of sun sent sin.
     Her plot of dirt is tucked away in a patch of herbage sown. Bees do the pollen polka for the earth to be with watermelon. Her sweet little grunts tell me that planting is erotic for her.
     The three of us join in a circle to settle into the unbroken chain. I grasp his calloused hand with her soft palm enveloped in my sensual clasp.
     Insects hum hypnotically. We dance to Afro-
pop which plays on a boom box. Their laughter warms my heart. The woman speaks like birdsong. My guide says, “She wants you to marry her.”
     I envision my African songbird and me as lovers in a past life. I can visualize us in a circle of yurts of yak herders on the vast steppe of Asia, or among the Peruvian Indian’s tents scattered in a lush green valley in the snow-capped Andes; or when we were Aborigines dancing around a fire in the cool outback night.

3

     With the first blush of dawn, she leads me my feet sink into the wet mud making love to the earth.  My toes are sunk into the luscious soil. My senses awaken into radiant awareness. I can hear the hiss of a crocodile even with the whoop of a rumpus of baboons.
     She rocks her ghost baby of the future in her arms. She holds her bundle of tomorrow’s joy to her breasts. But am I ready to be a father?
     An oval pool reflects the emerald trees. Her canary song speech awakens a choir of forest birds. Her eyes glitter with golden tears of joy.
     I squeeze her bird-delicate shoulders. Her eyes close into mystic rosebuds. Her body quivers, under my touch, like a wild doe in the presence of humans. I grab a chunk of wet red clay and fingerpaint her two hillocks with fiery suns radiating from the nexuses of her sensate swells.
     Her reverential hands gather the cool essence in her supple palms. She anoints my sacred stones in holy water. The wet kiss of her touch upon my bare skin leaves fingerprints deep within. She bathes my
loins until they rejoice in the ageless morning of a natal world born of mystery.
     The magic hour of nightfall approaches. The dying embers of swollen sun twinkle in her eyes like stars adrift in time. She pulls me by the hand with the urgency of the moon tugging on the sea. The ivy-covered forest floor resounds with crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and a bird singing. Fireflies blink on and off like stars in the Galactic night. They splash light upon the green leaves of the trees and ivy. I fill my lungs with cool dusk air redolent with the smells of dirt, grass, and flowers. Their glowing tails show us the trail to a house, decaying in the forest solitude.  
     The light from stars which gave up the ghost eons ago silhouettes the trees swaying in a restless forest wind waltz. We open the door to a future I never considered. Our phosphorescent friends shed light on the dust motes which are suspended in a silent dance. The walls are varnished in sepia moon paint. The full moon casts its spell, putting us in the mood for love.
     Wrinkled boots hang pendulously from rusty nails. A salt caked jar sparkles like a pauper’s chandelier. The dresser has sinuous cracks like tree limbs branching into arabesque swirls. The mattress molders in the dusty afternoon quiet. Shards of glass are scattered like diamonds in a corner shrouded in soft darkness.
     The little-winged lanterns shine on a spider that weaves its translucent web with its strands gathered in a cathedral of death. The spider’s church shimmers in heavenly perfection. Its crystal lattice glows with holy fire. The predator of time stalks my lonely hours. Life found purchase here once. It might be found again with caring and hard selfless work. I hear laughter from the tree swing.
     She looks misty-eyed. The late Afternoon sunlight slants across the room. Orange patterns dance through the window panes. The trees outside appear blurred in a reddened light paint. Shadows crawl across the floor in patterns of coal like dark clouds. The shadowy trees, seen through the windows, are like ancient Titans who haunt my world with preternatural beauty. She welcomes me to the bed.
     Her touch is the rich earth which nourishes my roots. Her body is the open flower craving my pollen. She opens each petal of my heart with gentle persistence and lays bare my center. She gently cradles my most secret self-holding the vulnerable egg of my deepest feelings. She tenderly strokes my center. The lilt of her song falls like gentle rain upon my sensate being. Each note is full of the sweet nectar of her ardor as I sow seeds of love in the garden of her soul.
     Our floating flashbulb friends illuminate us imprinting my retinas. Our tail haloed friends blink merrily to the tune of her deep-throated warble to let me see the passion play of her face as though she were a soul rising in ecstasy from purgatory into heaven.  

4

     My jungle chanteuse sings with feathery notes which rise into the treetops. Ferns shadow her curves in our rainforest haven where she forms vowels and consonants strung together into words with the song of a parrot but no mere echo. My feral woman builds her vocabulary like a mason who lays bricks for our house of love. “I love you” are her first words but Parrotese is her native tongue. Her thrush song is a flute-like ee-oh-lay, a carol of love for when she is feeling romantic. My favorite of her tunes is that of the African Golden Oriole which is a beautiful fluting fee-ooo fee-ooo and is more beautiful to me than the blown bamboo melodies which haunted me in my youth. Her tonalities include whistling when happy like a canary glad to be uncaged and free. When she is in a mellow mood she harmonizes with the wood warbler’s ‘pew-pew’.
     My wife points to a tortoise sunning on a pile of dirt.  She says, “Yeet yeet wurtle!” Then she makes a pillow with her hands and lays her head on it. She says, “weam” her word for “dream.” She creates a baby doll out of clay and holds it to her breast and belly. She tells me what the turtle told her while asleep about the tadpole that rests in her pool. I rub her belly to feel the tiny heartbeat but it is too soon. So she reaches out to caress my silky head with her fingertips.
     My book reading tells me that our child grows legs where once was a tail, sprouts fingers and toes, where once there were webbed hands and feet, and transitions from frog-like gills to a simian physique.
     She sings in a rainbow of notes which hover in the morning mist. The chirrup of her parakeet song turns into a louder, insistent tweweet and suddenly I understand. Our baby is about to be born.
     I look at her smile and see the shimmer of sunshine on the water in the river. She is woman, with skin the color of the richest earth, sparkling brown eyes, and a sensuously curved body, naked as at birth. I turn around and reach out to touch the soft skin of my woman’s cheeks. She strokes my hips and sides. She embraces me and gently caresses the soft skin of my back and buttocks. Her chirps tell me that we are bird people, brothers, and
sisters of the animals, plants, and rocks.
     Suddenly her eyes turn into white marbles. Her stomach ripples with each of her wails. She gives birth to a beautiful androgynous boy. After a month of Sundays, I pick him up.
     Misty rain glows with yellow streams of sunlight and soaks us in the earth’s translucent blood. I feel strange currents flow through my arteries. The forest breathes like a lover sleeping. Sadness creeps like ivy through the garden of my heart. Memories of our African Eden twine in knots of goodbye. A hand squeeze from her banishes my sorrow.
     Our son is secure in the papoose I made for him out of bed sheets from the abandoned house where he was conceived. I gently part the matted curls from her forehead. A smile twinkles like starlight across her face with a rainbow reflected in her eyes.
     We mist into showers of sunlight on our walk upriver and out of the forest into a new world pregnant with possibilities. From across the field, I smell smoke and hear people chanting. Insects hum hypnotically.
     The Elder sings stories into life. Olduvai Gorge was the great birth canal of humankind. His prophecy is that one day the buried bones will be plowed under by suburban sprawl. Hamburgers will be served over Lucy’s plot. Shoppers will gather over ancient watering holes to sip gourmet coffee. People are ape creatures with oversized brains who gnaw the meat off bones with their greedy appetite. We are newfangled monkeys who utter strange hoots while scratching our groins in privacy like timid wallflowers. Our worrying about body hair is nonsensical. We cover ourselves in cotton, ashamed of nudity, instead of letting it all hang out like sane people. Commuters crawl across the land, stretched out like ants in metal bugs, honking like madmen in a lunatic asylum.
     Our three day bus trip to Nairobi takes us across Tanzania into the Serengeti grasslands. The hours pass as I watch people in the fields carry bundles of wheat on their shoulders. I watch the brown skinned women carry their babies into thatched roof homes, to eat, sleep, and dream. As the day passes into dusk and I watch the dying red embers of the sun.
     At the Kenyan border, the customs man boards our bus to look at our papers but our attire is the focus of his attention. “You two look good in those potato sacks,” the grinning man said.
     “Burlap is the new silk where we come from,” I say with a smile.
     Lying in my bed back at our new home with the baby on my chest I think of the long years of toil ahead. I look at this miracle, the child who has fallen asleep in my arms. I gaze at him with the eyes of a father.