Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Peru for over half her life as an ESL teacher. Lark alternates between Lima, the capital, and her home in the jungle without electricity. Over the past several years, quite a few of her poems have appeared in online and offline journals.

Lark Beltran

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Camping

Yield to the sweetness
of the untamed ground –
hard mattress and mistress
cradling the crowd-weary
in pine-laced embrace.
Campfire smoke spirals prayerlike
toward immensity; amid night sounds
on the fringes of deepdark,
one is a child again,
diminished by the ancient and looming,
like ancestor in animal-skin
contemplating the Spirit
behind mountains and the rising moon.