Copihue Poetry

From Flights

Smog over Santiago is like when in movies the cops drape a corpse in a white sheet: from where we stand, above and outside the crime scene, it seems redundant to obscure what we all know is there beneath, but we are grateful nonetheless for the gesture, the ritual. Someone points out a condor behind us, a 180 degree spin away from the city, and for the half-minute or so that we track it, this open parenthesis, across the sky, we recognise our own luck in life. Then the condor slides behind a mountain, like a card into an envelope, and posts itself into memory. We were so lucky, we tell ourselves, and continue our descent back out of nature.