poems about Costa Rica

Canopy Curtain Call

Respledent Quetzal captured by Frank Vassen in Mirador de Quetzales, Costa Rica

[Photo captured by Frank Vassen in Mirador de los Quetzales, Costa Rica] 

Crystal-like whistles
Airy chirps and yawny sighs
Resonate from tree to tree
The orchestra awakens

The Sun opens a curtain as
The East Wind pushes through
And hushes the choir

Ringing through Monteverde
Like drops of water
With a festival twist
The opening number begins

Snow white coattails
Blood red vest
Long machete plumes of green and blue

Mesoamerica’s beloved ave
Cuts through the canopy
Like an electric strobe light

© Amelia Isabel

Me in 2008 birthing the poem in the middle of the cloud forest.

#ThrowbackThursday to a poem I birthed in 2008 on a bridge in the middle of the Costa Rican cloud forest. This is my most cherished work of poetry I have ever written. (Look at all that HAIR! And that concentration! That’s Czikszentmihalyi’s “flow” right there!) Photo credit: Sarah Boncal