Thinking of the sculptor José Pinto, whose only record in Santarém           is a bronze of a king vulture, 1927           that once stood atop the Teatro Vitória, since demolished, I pick up my notebook      and stroll with the Rio Tapajós,      alongside a large white egret enthroned           on a floating island of water plants,      the creamy blooms nodding and bowing           as they must have done                when the last Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II           sat for his portrait here in 1854. Now the vulture resides on a black wooden table      at the Centro Cultural João Fona,           holding on, with pinched scaly feet,           to a small bronze replica of the world,                where, for all I know, Dom Pedro still rules.