Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 100 journals on five continents, such as Drumvoices Revue, ENcontrARTE (Venezuela), übergang (Germany), Open Road Review (India) and Cordite Poetry Review (Australia); eight poetry chapbooks, five audio recordings and twelve anthologies. She also pens travel pieces, with stories appearing in the anthologies Drive: Women’s True Stories from the Open Road (Seal Press, 2002) and Far Flung and Foreign (Lowestoft Chronicle Press, 2012), and travel guidebooks. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem of the month. She has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the Patagonia. For the past decade, Ms Caputo has been journeying through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. You may follow her travels at Latin America Wanderer.

CARACOL

I.
With icy pink sunset
      the thundering waves
            of this cold sea wash calmer

I search the distant teal-
     platinum waters, dreaming
          of toninas

Wind brushes the thin firs
    dusk watercolors the night
        gold & indigo

II.
Into the twilight sea
    I toss a bouquet
       of small white wildflowers
& indigo sweet pea
   in a shell’s spiral vase

I here in Patagonia
   on the shores of the South Atlantic
      beneath the Southern Cross

& you there in Carolina
   many miles from the North Atlantic
     beneath the Little Bear

This night, friend, do you, too,
   dream with Yemayá?
      Can you hear her song?

The white-crested waves
    rolling, shattering
       upon a rough-sand beach
In the light of this
     moonless night

III.
I drift in spiral sleep
   listening to the murmured
       music of the sea

The earth soft beneath me
   stars glitter in a chill
       midnight blue heaven

Wind-tousled trees cast thin
    shadows across my home,
         across my warmed body

Read the rest of the poems here.