The sky’s pale beneath July’s breath of rain,
and the air is coffee- and rain-soaked.
A flush of flame from the flamboyant tree—
fiery red-orange blossoms dot the island,
scarlet-to-orange canopies blazing over
roadsides, plazas, and hillsides.
A rooster darts across the road, and there—
that’s me, watching wet grass after the rain.
I’m not large from this distance,
just a fence post, a row of hibiscus.
Wider still, beyond the bustling town,
along the country road, cows graze
in the pasture; a few weanlings kick out
under the same sky, pale
like a coquí’s throat before the call, pulled taut.
A few fields over, there’s a sow,
her potbelly round with piglets—or the idea
of piglets. It’s Puerto Rico, late July, and any
sow worth her salt carries the next December
feast in her belly. She leans against the shade
of a mango tree, and this image strikes me—
how some animals, even pigs, bear their young
oblivious to their fate.
It seems even we were shaped for a purpose.