Under the skin, into the heart

A night in Cusco

I sit at a table with cloud-misted neighbors,
our masks like fallen plates;
some of us have grown calmer in the altitude
some of us, freed of our lowland past,
become vertiginous.

We dine on fava greens, cream
of quinea soup, cape gooseberry mousse
and salted alpaca, feel safely afraid in the Andes
when a dark-skinned host begins to clack
his instruments, makes sounds
like water rushing in snake-hipped rivers, then floats
a whisper of condors flying between Mother Earth
and Father Sky, until all the tribes of Peru
are arrayed at the banquet table before us:

a Moche water pot turns cataract,
ceramic panpipes from Nasca coo,
a condor quill whisks spirits from Cusco,
a wooden flute still used to call down rain
in Lake Titicata.

Down the hill from us, crumbling huts of mud
and stone; in here, a native academic blows
Inca trumpets, conch shells voicing mountain spirits
things he tongues in his mouth.

He plays panpipes of bamboo and bone,
shakes gourds and rattles, whisks on his drums
with feathers, whistles like a bird screaming
in the Andes.

Tomorrow we go to Machu Pichu
but tonight, I glow like an angry gem
wrapped in a new skin foreign to my brain.

- Michael Salcman