TROPICAL RESURRECTION

On cold nights
all the lime green iguanas
turn gray and fall
fom the twisted branches
of sea grape trees

plummeting like carved stone
statues of reptiles.

Morning grants sunlight
the pulsing heat of solar flames
absorbed from beyond
the ninety-three millionth mile

just enough distance
to keep life renewed.

THE SEAMSTRESS

Fabric the color of a sunlit coral reef
slides through her hands
like water, settling into a sea of folds.

Her long, braided hair is still dark
but her eyes and fingers show age
the distance between this table in a corner
of the neighborhood dry cleaners
and her wandering childhood
on a tropical shore.

She rarely speaks, but when strangers
watch the smooth movement of cloth
she smiles, letting the rippled-wave folds
of a traveling sea
whisper her invisible story.

COLLAGE

When I was fourteen
the walls of my room
grew into an atlas of human faces
clipped from National Geographic
and pinned to the paint.

Goatherds, pearl divers, and weavers
covered the walls with continents
and islands.

Slivers of space
between the pictures
became poems
made of sky.

I never imagined
that it was the closest
I would ever come
to understanding clouds
and the distance
between people.

© Margarita Engle 08