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excerpts from In(diminishingly)finite
Series
The Matsiguenka
and the Uses of Plants
Yage, the drink of the ayahuasca vine, speaks, teaching
us:
how to address the death bite of the fer-de-lance;
how to forget by sipping the water held inside bamboo joints,
which thorns serve best as fish hooks;
that crushed, one leaf makes a violet dye; another soothes the bite of
the bullet ant; and a third cures the ulcerating bites of sand-flies.
Place a sap-drop from the soap-box tree on a rotting tooth—the aching
remnants will dissolve.
This mottled leaf, round like a belly with a dark button at its center,
speaks directly: rub and heal the
newborn’s umbilical.
Spiked, but dark and oval as river cobbles, these fruit pods comb our
black hair down.
A juice, dabbed on the nostrils of hunting dogs, magnifies the odors of
rodents, turtles, and armadillos.
Small orange fruits bring us spider monkeys; kapok seeds bring us birds.
Use Cat’s Claw for colds, bark tea for strength, fig sap for parasites
in the gut.
Strip the inner bark from the Cecropia tree—wash it, roll it on the
thigh, scroll it out, knot it into string-
bags—one pattern for men, another for women.
From these obliging trees: nun-birds sing to the women; monkeys sing to
the men;
and—singing back—we reciprocate.
North
American Names for South American Birds
Horned Screamer, Limpkin, Plumbeous Kite, Hoatzin, Piping Guan, Boat-billed
Flycatcher,
Yellow-headed Vulture, Blue-and-Yellow Macaw, Sun Bittern, Rufus-sided
Crake, Wattled Jacana, Orinoco Goose, Oecelated Woodcreeper, Screaming
Pia, Blue-headed Parrot, Cobalt-winged Parakeet, Paradise Tanager, Fork-tailed
Woodnymph, Chestnut-eared Arasari, Black-tailed Trogan, Emerald Toucanette,
Bare-necked Fruit Crow, Masked Titatra, Spangled Cotinga, Orange-bellied
Euphonia, Double-toothed Kite, Squirrel Cuckoo, Crested Eagle, and Magpie
Tanager.
Bill Yake’s poems began in the 60’s
(Spokane and Palouse River drainages) and continue though the 00’s
(Chehalis and Salish Sea drainages). Travel shakes him. These poems from
the Peruvian rain forest survived though cameras frozen and film moldered.
Check out his collection: This Old Riddle: Rain and Cormorants (Radiolarian
Press).
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