Journey Into A Brother's Interior Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Journey into a Brother's Interior
I step into my brother
Look out at his world through his eyes.

The interior of his skull is cluttered with
Toco toucans, anteaters, three toed sloths
Piranhas, capybaras, armadillos
Yacara caiman crocodiles, pumas, mackaws,
Poison dart frogs, anacondas,
Jaguars and golden lion tamarins

His ears are filled with:
The chatter of Portuguese.
The babble of the favelas
The background ripple of the river Amazon
The patter of rain from the rainforest
The scraps of indigenous Native speech and flutes
The sound of his clavichord as he plays Renaissance music
Far, far away, down the echoes of his mind
Is the speech of Doric and English
The clatter of feet on cobblestones
But these come from another time
A long forgotten place beyond the seas

He has lived so long in Sao Paulo,
He dreams in Portuguese. He lives with a Brazilian woman
They make music together as others make children

He stays with the constant presence of
Leprosy, malaria, yellow fever
Parasitic infection, rabies, typhoid
Dengue fever, meningitis
Tuberculosis, snake bites

We, his family, seen from behind his telescope
Must seem as irrelevant as ants, as inconsequential