RESPLENDENT QUETZAL
By Anne Whitehouse
PROMPT—Never will I forget ...
I Sighting
Five AM. The boat light’s beams
cast wide swaths across the still lake,
and the last stars are bright in the black sky.
The motor sputters and roars, and we are off,
the hull slicing through deep water.
The sky has whitened into dawn
when we dock near a still-sleeping town
and climb into the back of a pick-up truck
for our journey to Mirador Rey Tepepul,
a cloud forest in the mountains,
against the side of a volcano.
The clouds arrive in the afternoon.
In the morning the air is clear
and the sky is lit with a milky light.
We get off at the foot of a trail
and ascend a winding path
amid dense, lush forest.
Oaks and laurels, ferns and bromeliads,
wild avocado and dwarf bamboo.
Orchids bloom on moss-covered trees.
Some trees wear crowns of fuchsia.
In thickets of taffeta plants,
bell-like scarlet flowers drip white stamens.
This forest was once the sacred dwelling
of the Mayan ruler, Tepepul,
our guide, Ángel, tells us, and the Mayans
believed the Resplendent Quetzal
embodied the sacred spirit of the forest.
We stop near a grove of aguacatillo trees
in time to await the sacred bird,
who comes to breakfast on the fruit—
a small avocado whose pits,
the size of unshelled pecans,
it regurgitates whole.
It is the dry season,
and the path is slippery with dust.
Some of us sit, others stand,
I squat. Soon I am covered in dust.
Suddenly Ángel cocks his head
and adjusts his angled scope
mounted on a tripod.
In the symphony of birdsong,
he alerts us to the plaintive call—
keow kowee keow —
followed by soft hoots and whistles.
Through the lens of his scope,
he searches high in the trees
and soon finds what he seeks.
He directs my gaze through binoculars
until I, too, spot the Resplendent Quetzal
perched in the fork of a dead tree,
emerald feathers iridescent in sunlight,
a tuft of green feathers on his head,
deep crimson breast, black-and-white tail,
small yellow beak, bright beady eyes,
and his train, three feet long,
the green feathers curved like a soft sword.
II Afterimage
That day we saw two Resplendent Quetzals,
both solitary males. One flew away
before the other appeared. As I watched
the second flit from branch to branch,
I became aware of a loud and angry buzzing.
I recognized the whine of a chainsaw.
“What is that?” I asked, although I knew.
“We walk on protected land,
but that land is private,” said Ángel,
pointing across the valley,
“and they are cutting the trees.”
The noise of destruction cast its pall.
We shared a grief for losses we can’t prevent,
as Ángel told us about the Resplendent Quetzal,
a delicate bird, breeding only once
each season, producing two eggs.
“The eggs are preyed on by the Toucanet,
and often a nest will produce no offspring.
That, combined with loss of habitat,
is why these birds are endangered,”
said Ángel. “There are only
one hundred left in all of Guatemala.”
As the whine in the distance ceased,
we saw the Resplendent Quetzal
take flight and soar over our heads,
his long feathers streaming behind him,
undulating like a snake flying through wind.
“The Mayans say, ‘Teke uk matz,’”
said Ángel, “it flies like a serpent.”
None of us took of a picture of the ascent,
but later, over coffee in a café,
we all agreed that the vision
of the Resplendent Quetzal
in flight above our heads
was vivid in memory,
and we hoped it would remain so
till our dying days.
Anne Whitehouse's poems, "At the Poet's Last Reading," "My Parents' Yahrzeit," "Blue," "The Composer," "Cleopatra at Mersa Matruh," and "At Monk's House," have been published in The Journal of Expressive Writing. Anne writes from New York City.
