As I See It by Christine Stromberg - HTML preview

The Andes

Andes, a sprawling dragon, slumbering as it grows,

the length of South America, land of vast diversity:

from Atacama desert sands to snow or steaming jungle.

Jagged peaks tower over salt flats and caustic lakes

where flocks of pink flamingoes - feathered, stilted Riverdancers -

move en masse, their dance of love, and never miss a beat.

Torrent ducklings dance with death, plunging into freezing water,

tumbling, racing over rocks, yet somehow they survive.

Plucky little Humboldt penguins run the gauntlet through a horde

of nursing sealions, penguin eaters; bravely elbowing their way,

trampling the recumbent bodies, rushing past the snarling mouths,

risking all to reach the sea for fish to feed their young;

a sea  wherein another danger, orca - foe of penguins, glide

and leap, their snapping hungry jaws a harbinger of death.

A sheet of ice, the size of Wales, births a glacier, slowly flowing

ruthlessly, inexorably, into the southern seas.

On rocky heights, viscachas, tiny fur-robed, rodent monks,

warm themselves, greet the sun, and mutter benedictions.

Zorros, abhorring housework, move their pups from den to den,

chased always by the guanaco who hate them with a passion.

Mists arise, revive the lofty cacti which blossom,

a tasty treat for guanaco.  Somewhere a bromeliad

flowers once in thirty years, in hope of pollination

by humming birds which seem to thrive in disparate locations.

Flocks of jewel-bright macaws, raucous in their conversation,

fly beneath an azure sky, catch the eye and stun the senses,

Elsewhere spectacled bears, weighing all of forty stones

eat bromeliads, raise their young, high up in the tree tops,

with kodkod, secretive and shy, birdlike in the canopy.

While kudu - tiny foot high deer dwarfed by giant greenery -

puma, sloths green with algae, armadillos, countless creatures,

touch the heart and fill the mind with wonderment and awe.