Coqui

The rainforest symphonic
Green eruption
Bugs buzzing and palm leaves crinkling
Over me with the wind
With many sounds surrounding
Me vibrating me
Many creakes and chirps
And rustling in the shaking night
The terror and the trust to be so entangled
Lusciously in the lushness of much living
Environments densely with one another
And is not the diversity of the other
The diversity of the self? Is the self
Not other, the same stuff only closer?
And how it feels to be close
With much, happening!

What did one neuron say to the other?
I am here!
Every sound in the rainforest
Howling I am here I am here
You are there I am here We are here
Together can you feel me
Vibrating my true name to touch
The inside of my ear, your ear
I am here! We are here!

How do our names feel?
Do they feel like the waves roar?
And like this bug and that bug
And these background bugs
And this and that chirper and the tweeters
And the trillers and the clickers
And the skittering in the bushes
And the cleek cleek cleek cleeek
And the eetsk eetsk eets eets
And the chattering darkness that knows I am here
And thin palm leaves carussing
And a quack and I notice the self
Sounds like all of these sung together
And I is not composer yet composed.

A name is how one is heard and known.
One name rises above the din
Singing most sweetly to me,
The unique voice of Puerto Rico,
The little frog calling itself
Coqui, coqui,
Speaking a name truer to this island
Than any Spanish or English ever could be.
I stay late listening to my new favorite song,
And as I write I see a shooting star trailing long,
The star, too, singing its name so briefly.
Down here in the dank darkness many stars sing
And I sing along, I try on a new name,
It swells me, it suits me,
They reply, I am welcome,
They call and I respond with well-pitched whistles,
Co QUI, Co QUI,
Whoo WHEE, Whoo WhEE,
I am here,
We are here,
Coqui, Whoo WHEE