BAHAMAS

You are my Bahamas,
My land of promiscuous promise,
My exotic erotic erratic-ecstatic strange land,
One of the many unrealistic hopes of my life.
If I could have you, all would improve,
I dream.
I suit your shores as the single-anchored boat that drifts about with the tides.
Your morning glories cover wild bush in vines,
Unpotted, ungreenhoused, unnurtured, untrained, unrestrained.
Droughts are real, with months without rain;
I watch a small rainstorm that comes up and passes nearby.
And real rain washes the soil from the fields and the lawns to the sea,
And storm waves smash up high over cliffs and flood roads.
And in heat-shrill summer
One strip of a palm frond clatters in no breeze
And casuarinas stroke the stillest skies
Most delicately.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2007