Origami Microchap

SANTA MARTA AYRES
On Colombia’s Caribbean Sea

Cover art, ‘’Night Visitor” by author

•

I.
Down below on the
     littered beach, fishermen
            prepare a night’s work
Nets stowed, lantern
     checked, oars clunking
            to deep waters

Wind gusting, thunder-
    less lightning trembling
        over the mountains
The sea washing softly, a
    dulled verdigris, the silken
        sky dissolving

II.

For the first time in
these many nights, through a tear
in the clouds I see

stars – the horns & the
Pleiades of Taurus, red-
orange Mars looming

III.
Suddenly

someone’s alarm clock
radio in yonder
apartment sheaths the
pre-dawn silence of

this Sunday

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2024

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Cover image by author:

Volcán Villarrica & Lago. Pucón, Chile

•

SAVORING THE STORM

Suddenly the sky outside my room
grows dark, swift cloud shadows fall ‘cross
windows, deep thunder grumbles,
rattling panes … sharp lightning
flashes so near, I
can almost touch
it, I can
savor
it

PORTENT

Before the afternoon rains
come, the sun shines bright, its light
so hot, so searing … portent
of storms a-brewing.

REVELATION

All chill night
the rain falls

& perhaps come morn
it will cease

& the clouds will lift
to reveal

fresh mountain snows

WHEN WILL

The clouds are gathering this night,
veiling the waxing luna’s light.
Stars are hidden away
from my searching, questioning sight.
When will these rains become more slight
& days cease to be grey?

WHEN WILL

The clouds are gathering this night,
veiling the waxing luna’s light.
Stars are hidden away
from my searching, questioning sight.
When will these rains become more slight
& days cease to be grey?

ABIDING

someplace behind those clouds
of this too-long rainy season

the moon is slowly disappearing
soon to shine not upon our world

then she shall grow again
more full, night by night

her light growing brighter
illuminating our dreams …

unless those clouds hide her away
in this too-long rainy season

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2023

Click title to open microchap

Cover image by author:

Volcán Villarrica & Lago. Pucón, Chile

•

I.
Heading off into
a late Patagonian
sunset, violet &
fuchsia clouds reflected in
the gilded Río Chubut

    – Rawson, Argentina

II.
A dusk wind
swirls brown dust
down near-
deserted streets

The glass door of a café,
of a beauty shop opening

A phone booth slamming shut,
its receiver shaking

    – Trelew, Argentina

III.
Winter-leached grass waves
in the austral wind, sheening
like sleek mara fur

    – to Camarones, Argentina

mara – native Patagonian hare (Dolichotis patagonum)

IV.
Fine rain against the pane
woke me – & now in this
hour of yet darkness
thick foggy silence
drifts through the streets

    – El Calafate, Argentina

V.
Morning light rosens
the yet-dusky forests &
mountains, glints on
glaciers & the turquoise lake
white-capped by the wind

    – Puerto Guadal, Chile

VI.
This night
full moon light
glows off the snows
of a smoldering
volcano

    – Los Pozones, Chile

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2023

Click Title to download microchap 

Cover: ‘Río Pilcomayo 3’
by Lorraine Caputo

•

abandoned long
ago, now awash
with the buzz of frogs, the
near full-moon nudging
slow away the
day’s sullen clouds

II.
As midnight arrived
toting a new year,
a breeze billowed,
obscuring their passes
with dust shadowed
by the full moon

III.
Across this flat
forgotten corner,
marshes mirror
today’s nebulous
sky.
Amidst jungles
wend thin country
roads scraped into the
silty soil.
Red-
marked birds fly from
caranday palm
to caranday.
& this
day grows chillier,
quieter with fine
rain arriving.

IV.
Through these empty Sunday night streets,
down towards the port & across the swollen
river, thunder rumbles – a voice I haven’t
heard for many moons, absent I have
been from tropic airs. Once more my
journey shall wait. The storm ends. Drops
drip from the roof, into narrow patios.

V.
we zoom down the highway, wind
whipping through open windows,
towards a bridge o’er
a night-ebonied river,
towards a golden moon

VI.
I awaken from
hammock-swayed dreams, my tresses
awry – as if I

have travelled all the
night, a journey’s wind whipping
free my plaited hair.

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2022

 Click title to open PDF microchap

Cover artwork 'Blue Night Sea'

by author

•

MORNINGTIDE

Today dawns
almost clear
golden sun
stroking the
palm leaves

I watch the
now-calmer
sea below

Green ribbons
curling thick
e’er fraying
foaming ‘pon
beige sand

CARIB

This
Carib
Sea changes
from stormy blue
to salt-hued green &
indigo . . . . Then the clouds,
the agitated
wash of waves &
a shower
falling
deep.

MOONRISE

Full moon rises o’er
jungle hills, to dry frog song
& even-sea-crush.

Its light whitens palm
fronds dancing in a breeze left
behind by the rain.

CARIBBEAN DAWN

The starry night
dawned nebulous
yet with a
crescent moon.
Caribbean
dull, fracturing
foam & pierced
with showers.

Far asea a
rainbow splashes
across this
leaden day.

AFTER THE RAINS

From afternoon rains
emerges the sun, hot
up on these heights
overlooking the cove

The wash of high tide
distant ... showers yet
patch the
watery horizon

& gilded sea mist
rises, drifting
into nooks of
forest & cliff

The land crumples
into mountains deep emerald
clouds slinking through
canopies & valleys

LEONIDS

This isolated
night, full of soft cricket &
the ever-sea, I
watch the meteors shower
over jungle silhouette

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2022

Click title to open PDF microchap

Cover photo by author

•

THIS PRESENT

A heavy fog
shrouds the
pre-dawn city

bathing it in
a strange
brightness
& silence

the hills, the
buildings on the
plaza’s other side
disappeared

focusing only
on the immediate,
only the
here & now

-

AT THIS FOUR O’CLOCK HOUR

Sheer voile fog drapes
over the valley
& still streets
A dog’s barks echoes
down the narrow canyon
of the colonial city

& on the balcony
of a yet-open bar
(at this four-o’clock hour)
A woman sings
to ballads drifting
through the wide door

QUITO DAWN

On the plaza below, a
woman’s nasal voice
calling huevos slices the
golden morning air

From church to church, the
mass bells are ringing

Traffic quickens its
pace down these once-empty streets,
a vendor’s cartwheels
rattle across the flagstones

& that awakening song
is still playing in my mind ....

-

NOCTURNE

The quiet guitar,
the hushed voices are asleep.
All that awakens
me, that lulls me now is the
rain streaming down my terrace.

FOUR O’CLOCK STORM

That storm came again
this afternoon
clamping clouds down
on the volcanoes
on the city
hurricanesque wind shoving
a 45-degree rain
streets flooding
a skylight dripping
throaty thunder
hail stinging roofs

& through the now-quiet
avenues of dusk
homeward-bound people
carefully step
through icy-white mounds

-

TWILIGHT FIRE

Flame
sun sets
swirled clouds, black
treed hills on fire,

& drips sparks
on the
night

″

Lorraine Caputo © 2021

Click title to download PDF microchap

Cover photo: Máncora seaview
By Lorraine Caputo

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WASHES 

The clouded dawn in
a pale rose, the sea calmly
upon the fine sand

-

SEASIDE MORN

Slowly day
lightens the sea-
misted sky, silhouetting
thorn trees

Below my balcony
a pace of burros
walks through
the dry forest

the twig-snap
the leaf-crunch
barely heard above
the surf’s wash

At a distant
bamboo house
a cock greets
the borning day

-

STRANDS

With the changing tides
the wind rises, whipping strands
that loosely bind lives

NIGHT’S LIFE 

Bats flit from eaves

      crickets rasp, some

            nightbird calls

toads hop, stop, hop

      from under rocks

the waves crush

Beneath the sky

      obsidian

            speckled with

a million stars

      a gazillion

galaxies

-

SEASIDE SUNSET

Yet pelicans &
boobies soar above, they dive
into the pallid

fuchsia & aquamarine
waters of this cloud-
veiled sunset, gold-rimed orchid

& rose, misted by the sea.

UNFAMILIAR SKIES

For so long I have

      not seen that phosphorescent

            sheen of the Milky

      Way dusting the velvety

heaven full of diamond stars

Here in the night bathed

      by cricket song & the wash

            of the Pacific

      even against the shale-grey

sands, I gaze up at this sky

of the South, yet not

      understanding the designs

woven across its

stellared depths, searching for those

falling through the Universe

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2021

Beneath The Enchanted Moon

(Galápagos Nights)

Click title to download PDF microchap

Cover photo by author

•

I.

In the night of a

             moon yet to rise, yet to dance

             Through shorn clouds, crickets

             rasp, the sea ebbs & petrels

             twirl on silent silver wings.

II.

This three-quarter moon

shadows torn clouds, edges them

with platinum, stars

between, in the clean

slate-blue sky. I listen to

the sea’s lullaby

III.

Clouds lustrous beneath

the near-full moon

embraced by a

copper ring

Broad hands of opuntia

silhouette against

the sky

The night drips

& now & again

the chitter of petrels

in flight

IV.

Through torn clouds gleams the

past-midnight full moon. Outside

a huaque awaits

my return, beck’ning

me to the Land of Dreams of

this primitive night.

The still bright

just-past-full moon light

seeps through the thinned

swatches of this night’s

worn-felt sky

VI.

Garúa mists the

night, lava stones, fallen leaves,

the scattered flowers

Garúa mists the

sea, rolling, foaming, flowing

‘neath stars & waned moon

Garúa mists my

mind, slumber beckoning e’er

these words are written

•

Lorraine Caputo © 2020