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Among Bananas: Guápiles, Costa Rica
by Philip Krummrich

There is no heat or hush
like the heat and the hush of a mile of bananas.
You walk and you walk
past identical leaves of identical green
till you ache for a spider or centipede,
anything,
hating the leaves. 

If I ever dream
of that walk through the heat and the hush of that mile of bananas,
may my bedstead crack,
my sewerpipe burst,
my toenails split,
or anything to wake me.

I could have sobbed to see,
squat in the shade of one palm, strewn with the fruit of one mango,
that lizard-stippled house,
because it was not leaved and green
and not bananas. 

Other poetry by Philip Krummrich:

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