Seven Days in a Cloud Forest

Susanne Kennedy

Lake Atitlán, Guatemala

Each night, for a week, an hour after darkness

claims all the infinite and small spaces, a local man

and his young son climb a mountain to my cabana.

On the first night, they tuck themselves

into side shadows. And on the nights that follow—

as I lie inside reading or looking out, willing the stars to fill me—

they slowly inch around till legs dangle

off the porch before my front door. The cabana’s elevation

eye-to-eye with volcano peaks, its cantilevered

crane over the water’s edge, is the first article

of our silent pact. Sometimes, we hear the relics

of church music, or flower-sized fireworks in the distance.

Mostly, though, it’s the sound of almost nothing—dusted

here and there with a close, muttered word, a rustle

of food wrapping. The presence

of the man and boy each night this week

fills me with something I’d forgotten

about stillness. Stillness shared.

SUSANNE KENNEDY is a Melbourne-based poet whose poetry often takes its inspiration from close observation of the natural world. Her poetry has won the Antipodes and Nillumbik Poetry Prizes (open), been shortlisted for the Bridport, Gwen Harwood, Fish, and Australian Catholic University Poetry Prizes, and been published in Antipodes, Rabbit, Island, Westerly, Cordite and Eureka Street.