Collage Looking South

                  A slender woman with chestnut skin
                  steps from her bath and turns
                  to reach a white towel adorned
                  with pink floribunda roses
                  embroidered on each cuff

                  Her breasts are cupped in
                  the hands of a paso fino horseman
                  wearing black pampas denims
                  tucked into polished roper boots
                  A blue racer snake twirls up his leg
                  its glazed tongue flicking
                  a kiss on the woman’s mound

                  Over her shoulder a photograph
                  of two red-billed swans
                  captures their weaving dance prior
                  to mating in shallows of a wetland lake

                  A flock of macaws painted inside
                  a shadow box framed below the ceiling
                  alight in a grove of wax palm trees
                  and preen their querida's feathers

                  Across the top of this collage
                  a narrow-gauge train pulls into the station