Image Courtesy of Lara Danielle. Shared via a Creative Commons license.

—-

The Cenotes of Cara Blanca

The cenotes are satisfied
Having immersed
A maiden already heavy
With the burden of her fate
Into the contemptuous
Blue haze
Turning without haste
To Larimar mists
Their capricious depths
Now resting benignly
In the blazing fire of
The noonday sun

She may have fallen
Or is ascending slowly
To the mirrored heavens
Rising up like Christ
Unfazed by the fuss
Of the gasping
Unctuous assembly
As she slowly meanders
This solitary passage
Casually bruising
The obligatory tufts
Of cumulus clouds

She succumbs like someone
Floating in air
Slow motion
Breasts filling out
Without competing
With gravity
Like ripe mameys sinking
In a darkening mire
Clothes flung out freely
Hair billowing around
Treacherous black coils
Of quieted serpents

This is how angels die
Far removed
From their cosmic winds
Their wings
Useless contrivances
Reduced to the terrine
Physics of this world:
Feathers, barbs, barbules
And feather mites
Waterlogged
Ordinary
Like drowned manatees

—-

 

Arnulfo Kantun was born July 30, 1973 in Belize and worked in Guyana and Jamaica as a Project Coordinator in various areas of Public Health. He has a keen interest in Mayan archaeology, farming and issues affecting First Nations People in the region. He chooses to share his poems because he wants to add the voice of the over seven million people belonging to the Maya nation spread across Mexico, Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. The Indigenous voices of the Caribbean are often forgotten, overlooked and unrepresented, “but we are still here” he says.