Our bus was a toy. Dolls, the driver,
director, professors. I was a miniature

doll in the doll hands. The task, climb
scrabble by slide into un bosque virgin

donde la vegetación es notoriamente
particular. The dolls called it a hike.

They said get going. I was a student,
there to learn. I did what they told me,

stepped into mud-drenched night, tree
shapes leaning, sounds rushing from

where, flashlight flash, translucent
spider shimmer. Puma, bromeliads,

clouds brushing my hair, luring me off
green sound of ledge past gray-white

curtain. And if, El Niño, mud boy
of dripping leaves, I fall into billions

of fog atoms, will I deserve that
kind of transformation, sight-altered

and smeared as I am, wrestling earth’s pull
to crawl to la comodidad de una Estación Biológica

cuyo principal atributo es estar inmersa
in what I didn’t know how to worship.