Maggie's Farm

--i was wandering one day (back when/while working the oil patch down there) under the triple canopy (as they call it) down in the Orinoco River basin of southeastern Venezuela.

In places the forest floor is almost park-like, thanks to the sun shield discouraging low and medium growth (the same 'no heliotroping for YOU' message Cleopatra got from the Romans). The scale and aspect of the enclosed space evokes an emerald Gothic cathedral --a vast veiled twilight with a daylight undertone of glow, the peepholes to the sun strewn haphazard among the giant Kapok tree canopy being as the stained glass cathedral windows, both prone at any moment to drop down to the floor a dance troupe of sun beams to perform and glow a frantic hopeful moment until the inevitable stage-hook from God or the gigantic jade inverted colander tilt-a-whirling ponderously overhead.

So i'm hiking along in this emerald dreamworld when there's a sudden change in the background bug, bird & beast racket.

There --about fifty feet off the ground and a hundred feet from top to bottom and twice that side to side, was the change agent, aimed straight at me and fast oncoming, a sort of iridescent rippling in the air that was rapidly clarifying into hundreds and hundreds of miniature lemon lime UFOs zooming through the dark green, flashing like strobe lights when passing through the smattering of sun columns.

In a few seconds it was neon featherballs all around, coming and going, over around and away from where dumbstruck stood i, beholding hundreds of green and yellow parakeets, singing their hearts out and heading up the creek --singing themselves toward what, some better place in birdland it sure sounded like.

They came over in a freight train whoosh, jungle birds Doppler Effect burbling along behind to further stun the nearby enchanted human sensory system, and sparkling the air back up the soggy creekbed i'd hiked down, drained out of visibility.

I distinctly recall it was so abruptly so quiet that i needed a noise, so i hollered after them, "Hey! Polly want a cracker?"