Tankas for the Pantanal

Photos fade with time;
not the snapshots of mind's eye.

My guide "Mario",
mix of tourist savviness
and wilderness machismo.

!;!;!

Vast plains marsh and weeds,
I remember it clearly.

Mario's favorite
phrase "no problem" or "very
funny" when we played a trick.

!;!;!

Network of dirt roads,
swinging hammocks, 3-walled homes,

peopled neighborhoods,
making food, getting haircuts -
voyeurism from a bus.

!;!;!

The 2nd Law of
Thermodynamics says that

entropy augments;
my feelings are as solid
as a water soliton.

!;!;!

Jeering parrakeets,
a clacking tuiuiú,

frogs purr, gators hmmph,
black tree monkeys squeal enround -
cacophony of strange sounds.

!;!;!

I was poor back then,
no camcorder with zoom lens,

but machines that play
physically stored music break;
I play stereophonics.

!;!;!

Christy Bergman
January, 2002

Note: Tanka is another Asian meter, like Haiku, consisting of 31 syllables in a 5-7-5-7-7 pattern. I chose this form for my Brazilian wildlife recollections since Japanese have been using it at least 1300 years for their contemplations of nature.

Note: The Pantanal is one of the world's largest swamplands (an area about the size of France) located in the Mato Grosso (South) of Brazil. There are no maps of the area. It is said to have a wildlife density second only to the Massamara in Tanzania.