or onto a university campus to visit
his Time Lab, in the museum
where he studied the skeletons
of extinct giant lizards, woolly
mammoths, and saber-toothed tigers
that seemed so alive.
There was a Spirit Lab too,
with pickled creatures floating
in green glass jars, like liquid
ghosts,
and a mysterious building
that Papa called the Maze
of Lost Scientists,
where specialists peered
into microscopes, each one working
year after year until he knew more
than anyone else on earth
about a particular species
of orchid, spider, centipede,
or worm. The specialists
were jokingly nicknamed
Flower Man, Dr. Tarantula,
Lord Centipede, or Mr. Maggot.
By Mateo’s age, I was already known
as Bird Boy, a student of feathers
and topography—an odd mapmaking term
adopted by naturalists to describe the study
of bird anatomy, as if wings
might turn out to be landscapes
that invite
exploration.
Geological engineering was my grandpa’s
idea, a practical course of study, leading
to steady work. But now, each and every
glorious, hot, sweaty Sunday afternoon,
I am once again Bird Boy, a grown man
kept young and hopeful
by venturing far and wide
to investigate
the unknown.
MATEO
WINGED ART
Augusto shows me how he paints
swift portraits
of wings
in a bright sky,
as flocks of brilliant birds soar
past his window
like dreams . . .
If only I could be free to fly
on paper
all week,
turning each day
into an expedition
of the curious mind
and observant eye.
But Mondays are workdays.
Bend. Heave. Lift. Grunt. Ache.
Sigh.
ANITA
ALMOST INVISIBLE
When Mateo tells me about his Sunday job,
I sneak into the gold zone, the best place
for selling remedies that cure loneliness
to the homesick wives
of American engineers.
I glance up at Augusto’s window
and see Mateo painting on canvas,
just like a real artist. Suddenly, life
seems as changeable
as a clearwing butterfly
that appears green when it rests
on a leaf, brown on a twig,
or blue in a cloudless sky.
I imagine I must be changing too,
but when those clear wings are your own,
it’s impossible to detect all the hidden
mysterious details.
MATEO
COMPLETELY MAGNIFICENT
Augusto gives me art supplies
and lessons, so that I can paint
every amazing creature I see:
a slow-moving
boa constrictor,
two swiftly sprinting whiptail lizards,
and all the gigantic rodents that graze
on gold-zone lawns—cat-size agoutis
and dog-size capybaras, none of them
afraid to be captured
by my paintbrush.
Anita is thrilled to accompany us
each time we pack up our supplies
and go out exploring for iridescent
hummingbirds and resplendent
green quetzal birds with impossibly
long, shimmering tails that make us
wonder if we are dreaming.
ANITA
MY GARDEN OF CURES
Climbing
heals me.
Treetops
soothe me.
Mysteries like army ants and bullet ants
threaten me.
High in the leafy layers
of my forest mother’s canopy,
my body seems as slow and awkward
as a grinning sloth’s, but my mind
feels
winged
as I dodge small dangers, listening
to the trees and birds, while far below,
Mateo paints.
THE HOWLER MONKEYS
FOOD
WE LOVE LEAVES
WE LIKE FRUIT
WE EAT
ALL DAY
WE HOWL
AT SUNSET
WE DREAM
ALL NIGHT
NO MORE NOISE
UNTIL DAWN
THE RUBY-THROATED HUMMINGBIRD
MIGRATION
Returning from north to south
I cross
the wide sea
alone
never resting
above waves waves waves
and then this green land
of winter warmth
my exhaustion complete
until I find
the sweet flowers
this nectar
my life.
THE ARMY ANTS
TOGETHER
we move in droves hordes masses
we line up and march
we eat every creature in our path
living or dead
we strip the meat off all the bones
we eat muscle sinew fat
we march until nothing is left
but our movement
we march march march
falling into water
making bridges
of our bodies
so the rest of us can march march march
and eat eat eat
THE BULLET ANT
SOLITARY
I move through leaves
alone
it takes only
one sting
to keep me safe
from mouths
that eat
and feet
that crush
I live
with fear
and power—
my sting
THE TREES
WILDERNESS
We are fewer
than before,
but each of us
is just as alive
as ever,
our leaves
hungry for sunlight,
our roots thirsty
for rain,
our fruit and seeds carried far
by flying birds and roaming animals
so that young trees can sprout and grow,
our shared forest once again spreading
like music.
MATEO
ANOTHER YEAR
Seasons of rain, mud, dust,
raging sun,
furious fevers.
This heat of burning muscles
and blazing fears,
the harsh heat
of sheer weariness,
as I slice my way deeper and deeper
into the fiery loss
of time.
I am not old yet, but at fifteen,
I no longer
feel young.
HENRY
CRATE TOWN
So much of the silver I earn
goes right back to the Americans
as payment for my cot in the barracks
and payment for those shameful, no-taste,
stand-up-in-mud,
spiceless meals.
Even though I always manage to send
a bit of silver home to Momma, it’s never
enough to feel as though I still belong
to a real real family.
All around me, hundr
eds of Jamaicans move
out of the barracks, into the jungle,
where they sleep in shacks made from empty
dynamite crates, and buy rice and beans
in Silver Town, and cook over campfires,
just so they can eat sitting down,
feeling human.
MATEO
PRECARIOUS
Augusto calls Henry’s crate town
un precario, because the shacks
can be swept away by floods,
or flared away
by cooking flames,
or smashed by policemen
when they rampage, searching
for runaways.
I long to move too—
out of the barracks
and into the wild jungle—but it means
hiking all the way to a labor train
each morning and all the way back
from the train each evening—
hiking, hiking,
no matter how weary
the feet, no matter how weary
the heart.
So I try it, and soon I discover
that I can never willingly return
to the dangers of sharing
a small, crowded barracks-car
with anarchists.
I prefer the dangers of wilderness.
Crocodiles, serpents, and jaguars
are not nearly as frightening
as angry men.
On Sundays, Henry and I buy food
for the week, so that after work,
we can cook out in the open, adding
as many hot peppers as we want,
along with a sample of Anita’s
saffron, ginger, and cinnamon.
Then we sit
together,
medium-dark
and dark-dark,
as if
the bizarre
Canal Zone rules
did not
matter.
AUGUSTO
OMINOUS NEWS
Chief Engineer Stevens
has abruptly resigned,
discouraged by rain, mud, fever,
and landslides, and by islanders
who are moving out to the jungle
by the thousands, so that they
show up for work only
half the time.
President Roosevelt has already
appointed a replacement.
The new chief is an Army man
who threatens to run the canal
like a war against
nature.
GEORGE W. GOETHALS
from the United States of America
Chief Engineer, Panama Canal
Chairman, Isthmian Canal Commission
ONE-MAN RULE
Roosevelt insisted that I take this crazy job,
so I made him sign an executive order
that I wrote myself, giving me full control
of every aspect of Canal Zone life:
Labor. Housing. Hospitals. All of it
is mine. I’m the only judge and jury,
and the only Constitution, and because
we’re far beyond U.S. borders,
there won’t be any need
for a Bill of Rights.
I’ve already outlawed labor unions
for American steam-shovel drivers,
and if the gold men don’t like it,
they can bring their complaints
directly to me. Face to face.
Man to man. No go-betweens.
No negotiations.
I’ve set a digging quota too.
Three million cubic yards of dirt
each month. Under Stevens, the workers
dug only a fraction of that
in two years.
I’m a military man, so this will be
my personal war against mud.
I expect a complete and absolute
victory.
JACKSON SMITH
from the United States of America
Manager, Department of Labor, Quarters,
and Subsistence
HOUSING
Goethals runs the war against mud,
but I control houses and barracks.
That’s why all the workers call me
Square Foot Smith, because I give
every white American gold man
one square foot of housing
for every dollar he’s earned
per month on the job.
When reporters ask me
about conditions for silver men,
I explain that the dark races
are ignorant—they prefer to live
in boxcars or out in the jungle, so
there’s no point giving them
extra clothes
They would just get
everything
dirty.
MATEO
THE BRAIN WAGON
Nights in the makeshift crate town
feel like a crazy escape.
Along with my treasured Sundays,
freedom-crazed living helps me feel
stronger. I love exploring the forest
with Augusto, who teaches me to sketch
birds, frogs, butterflies,
and Anita, smiling
beneath her basket
of magic.
Mondays always feel unreal,
with Goethals patrolling the pit
in a yellow electric train car
that he calls his Brain Wagon.
From its safety, he studies our danger,
then makes his warlike decisions
about mud.
HENRY
MONKEY HILL
The war against mud
belongs to Goethals,
but the wounds
and the losses
are ours.
Layers of rock tumble,
sheets of sludge slide,
and the mule-drawn
death wagon
rolls back and forth,
delivering islanders
to a hilltop graveyard,
where howlers, way up
in the green green trees,
shriek and moan
like lonely
phantoms.
MATEO
THE HOSPITAL
Malaria strikes me
like a fist of flame.
Heat, chills, shivers,
and half-awake
fever dreams.
When I slump down at work,
I’m carried away from the mud
in a mule-drawn ambulance
and then lifted onto a train
that whisks me away
to a sweaty cot
in the silver ward,
where I gulp foul-tasting medicine:
bitter quinine, my only
hope.
ANITA
HEALING
I hover close to Mateo’s cot.
Finding him here, so sick and so weak,
is a shock, even though I sell herbs
in this dismally dreary hospital
often enough to see much worse.
The hospital is divided into sections.
Silver men. Gold men. Women.
There is a ward for uncurables too,
desolate yellow-fever patients who are
quarantined behind screens, so that if
a stray mosquito bites one, it can’t
get out and bite a healthy
doctor or nurse to pass on
the dreaded disease.
I make sure Mateo doesn’t swallow
too much quinine, the brewed bark
of a cinchona tree, the only cure
for malaria. Without the bitter remedy,
his liver and kidneys would fail.
He would die . . .
But too much quinine
can leave a malaria patient
blind, or deaf, or both,
&nb
sp; like the helpless beggars
who haunt Bottle Alley.
Mateo doesn’t
recognize me.
His fever-melted mind
seems as lost as the heart
of a traveler
who strays
too far
from any
known trail.
MATEO
REALITY?
A nurse with the smile
of the herb girl, but wiser,
a grownup . . .
or is she just one more illusion,
a feverish
wish dream?
If only I could tell
the difference between daylight
and night dreams.
ANITA
PATIENCE
The silver ward is hideous.