Ode to the Amazon

A bossa nova played and she perched a cigarette between her lips.

“Give me fire,” she said.

His cafezinho stood cooling on the starched white table cloth as he held his lighter to her cigarette, and then his own.

“Give me fire,” he repeated, smiling provocatively.

As he drank his cafezinho, he leaned his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray so that a single string of smoke danced toward the sky. But it was all in vain because the sky was gone.

The tree tops crackled, each leaf a cremated soul that fell to the ground and turned the red earth grey. 
Never again became again and again.

Less defacation will solve it. Children will solve it. Lighting another cigarette will solve it. Even a bossa nova might solve it.

Give me truth, not fire.

On the burning of the Amazon, a symbol of our conscience with the other forests of the world, in the beloved land of my birth.