on brazil’s beaches lie rubber blocks
salty printed with product-of characters.
air-filled wheel rattling: a beginning of many
for the production of insulation material, uniforms,

tires pulled to smooth sandy soil
in front of borders.
muffled return of tropical boom
stranded from 6000 meters deep
from the wreck of the german blockade runner ms “rio grande”
from the tears of an old amazon basin tree – at least three time zones long –
deploring close quarters, left for other continents or

from the flood of a stolen seed wrapped in banana leaves that over- turned a monopoly:
raw rubber. the size of a suitcase. sunk in earlier january days
if not planted long ago in springy soil,
elastic, seeking self-deriving stability, as many are.
the sand, smoothed in a loop, for easier tracing of shoeprints before bor
ders.