From the Firefly Galaxy

In the era before smartphones,
a time prior to sharing photographs 
instantly as if it took no more effort 
than a casual hello 
exchanged with a stranger, 
you rode in a tour van 
through La Fortuna on your way 
from Arenal volcano
back to San Jose and almost went past 
a lone tree spreading its branches 
in a field beside the road’s shoulder. 

But the driver pulled over and stopped. 
Climb out of the van to see 
what has the guide excited.
You don’t understand what’s happening
until a frog leaps from a leaf 
then lands on your chest. 
Their bright orange feet cling 
to your T-shirt like honeysuckle flowers. 
Skin green as jade, eyes red as lava,
they have a muscled body 
about the size of your thumb –

your naïve thumb, 
which has not known how it feels 
to stroke a small, illuminated screen
expressing approval or disdain
for someone’s image 
within a clamor of data. 

The guide explains this tree 
shelters dozens of these frogs,
the slick sheen under each leaf 
being fertilized eggs. When they hatch,
it will rain tadpoles into puddles
collected around the trunk. 
No algorithm produced 
this encounter – your luck to have it
due to the guide’s insight, 
thrilled to point out for other people
a trove of life you might have overlooked.  

Walking from the parking lot to the beach, 
we can hear snorts and guttural bellows 
of elephant seals sprawled on the sand.

They heaved their bodies from the ocean
by the hundreds, thick fur seawater-slick.
Exertion on land ripples their blubber.           

Immense mothers cuddle pups, 
shielding against feverish young males.  
Dominant bulls left the shore 

before weaning even began, 
and are no longer here 
to muscle out challengers for the harems. 

We stand on decks propped up against the bank
while sandpipers on swift and slender legs
bustle among the herd of seals below. 

By month’s end, the pups will have learned to swim
and the beach will be empty of them all –
their fate in the tides, where great white sharks lurk            

and orcas prowl, as precarious as our own.
Back in the car, the radio blares news,
a dismal rundown of the world’s crises:

global warming, political impasse. 
We drive away on Highway 1, 
more of which slides into the surf each year.

To all beings, the asymmetric trait
lends character            and beauty. 

How delightful the single, arched eyebrow
of a baby exploring their world
or the rakish cant of a hawk’s tail 
                          as it soars in level flight. 

Under a microscope, the off-center
nucleus of a paramecium
could be said to enchant the most jaded
             observer;

on a grander scale,
the mismatched parabolas
that tattoo either side of a finback whale 
give majesty to its bulk when it lunges through 
plumes of krill 
                                      in the oceans of our planet,
                          with its steadfast spin
             on a tilted axis. 

Who could deny 
the pattern of stripes on a tiger’s flank 
is never the same between left and right?
A key element of its formidable charm
which both mesmerizes and repels
anyone who spies it lying in wait. 

                          Just so, imbalance in nature
                          provides a kind of momentum:

              even when there is no wind,
the leeward slope of a mountain
draws a herd of goats around the peak
toward its calm shelter

and in the valley below, a river’s west bank 
hosts a bountiful thicket of flowering rushes 
while the opposite shore is golden sand
lit by the sun’s descent fading below
             the bent horizon. 

Grandpa and his platoon slept in a tent
those months they were stationed at Burma. 
Retired driver of McLean trucking
with less than a high school education,
he often told me stories about the war 

when I was a kid, and one that stands out
was while we bounced a ball to each other
on the concrete walk in front of his house,
him sitting on those mint-green front porch steps
and me by the chain-link gate to the street. 

We passed that ball back and forth in rhythm
with our conversation, me asking him
what it was like, and he would explain it. 
A technical sergeant fixing airplanes –
fighters, bombers, and flying fortresses –

getting pilots and crew back in the air 
as fast as he could during World War 2.
For him, as he told it, the threat to life
was rarely, if ever, at front of mind.  
“Uncle Sam sent me around the whole world!”

He would proclaim with a prideful chuckle. 
Until one night, when they were all asleep
after having roasted meat on a spit
over a camp fire they made in their tent,
he was awakened by a rummaging 

coming from the canvas flap to outdoors
and he saw a tiger had made its way
in with them, sniffing at the empty spit –
then at the feet of his trembling teammate 
who lay in a cot not ten feet away. 

As quiet as possible, grandpa reached 
for his rifle, but before he could aim,
the tiger went off, leaving them alone. 
I guess this is to say I am grateful
the tiger did not bother him that night,

and the enemy who surrounded him
weeks later in battle was driven off, 
and I am here to share the tale he told –
savoring in thought the halcyon time 
of my youth, as well as his place in it.