Rio Negro

A Poem by Chris T.

A piece for a new collection I am writing called "Journeys"

I submitted to youthful wanderlust
aboard a single-motor skiff.
Sipping lukewarm cerveza Brahma
beneath a Brazilian sun,
My childhood friend Aduviri
drags his fishing pole behind the boat
pulling up the black river silt and little else.
His eyes light up beneath
a faded Yankees cap,
and he extends a tanned hand
towards a hidden cove,
a riverboat graveyard forgotten
to the jungle.

The paint stripped Jungle Mistress
lays dying alongside Hercules rotted frame.
Husks consumed by algae pools,
twisting around towering Kapok trunks,
whose roots protrude from their hulls.
Abandoned beneath the howls and cries of paradise
and the creeping canopy shadows.
A pink dolphin surfaces on the horizon,
and Aduviri silences the motor
to respect the river’s power.
I reach for a cerveza
and smile.