our Sri Lankan driver peers ahead
through a windshield wet with rainforest
each dip and potholed turn
throws my stomach to the butterflies
I scan the sleepy morning mist
a veil for verdant wisdom

my heart opens
to a wild, untamed touch
on foot, the terra cotta trail caresses
lined by leeches waving suckers
seeking the offspring of my marrow
our guide pulls from a magic pouch
salt to mask palpitating flesh

insects sing with timbal trumpets
to the rhythm of six percussive legs
a zebra butterfly stretches her stripes
and dragonflies dash forth
four-winged faeries chasing breakfast
avoiding dew-sparkled spiderwebs
an orb weaver holds in patient perch
on the almost squares of silk
her eight arms embracing the labyrinth’s eye

a dead trunk arches over the path
sporting spots of lichen-age
ferns sprout fresh limbs
on this drooping corpse
the scent of nascent bloom
rises above loamy death
life ebbs and rain flows
like a neap tide, its moisture
sucked into the insatiable earth
abiding roots eager as a suckling babe

the guide asks:
“would you like to lead?”
my soul ignites the way
the full moon agrees with the sun
I take charge like a bloodhound
sniffing out secrets around every bend
inspecting sori and each immense microcosm

after the green vine with a forked tongue
clear serpent streams appear
their tails in the highest mountains
while trees spark a thousand stories
shown in twisted trunk and slithering branch
where the divine endures
in the planned pattern of scale and leaf

a primate hollers from the canopy
the alpha male demands I stay beneath
we must turn back, yet I am called
drawn to the otherness of this temple
finally alone with God
seeing him in the frail fronds of a fern
in the spiderweb’s meticulous mandala
the thousand land-oars of a millipede
the veins of the forest under my skin

the tropical sky opens once more
bathing my intimate shell in cloud
we retrace our gallant steps
and stumble upon a monk
my surprise at his hermetic home is not his
he offers his selfless shelter
and serves tea steeped by sacred hands

our path diverts
and ends in a river wedded white by upstream falls
I carry my shoes and cross the spirit waters
in search of the omniscient undertow
of raw and rapturous Sinharaja

clutched by my sultry hotel bed
silent and naked
leg muscles tight as grandfather bamboo
sodden clothes strewn to a cockroach floor
belly button kissed by an industrious leech
the creature bloated by my blood
I hear the voice without reason
the wild howl within
primal, druidic, forgotten
beckoning my nuclear return