The villagers speak of settlements on the hillsides
where fruit trees sprout golden, red-orange flowers,
birds the color of regret perch on palm fronds, preen

celestial blue feathers. In the middle of moonless
nights, children complain of this shifting of earth,
split tableaux way deep underground. Like grinding

teeth. Slow at first, you can't mistake them
for earthquakes because there's no rumbling involved,
only the subtlest of movements, then the sinking.

You are lying on your hammock and there's that gut-
sensation you are going down. Like those elevators
in the skyscrapers in Manhattan. The villagers speak

of being swallowed whole. It is in their folklore,
they have fifty words for "disappear," fifty more
for "absent." The children take school trips to the mouth

of the volcanoes to leave hibiscus flower wreaths
in homage to this god, this god of sinking things.
From the distance, they themselves, dressed in uniform,

create a blue crown on the mountain top, these tiny dots
so blue when they come down it starts to rain. Water
cascades toward the center of town, darkens in the mud.

The villagers say the earth is so thirsty, and they show
the lines of their cracked hands. Droplets of sweat
like mercury, a flash of silver desire for all things drowned.