GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

The wide world has its glories

In a rich complexity

But sitting watching the sun set

Is good enough for me.

Canada has six time zones

From sea to sea to sea

But one tide lapping where I sit

Is good enough for me.

The muezzins in the Saudi mosques

Wake all to pray and pee

But a rooster crowing in the bush

Is good enough for me.

And Singapore is lush and green

And managed prettily

But scrub grass and a sandy beach

Are good enough for me.

All – good enough for me.

Published online: Snakeskin 225, January 2016

GOLDEN CHILDHOOD

Golden girl on a sunset beach
With a dog and a horse,
Golden boy spears a silver shark
Under the sea;

Is such a dream forever in reach
Or forever false?
We stumble, emotional, through the warm dark
Back to the sea.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, April 2009

DIMINUENDO

In the garden that is sweeter than the water,
In the sea that beats the beach with playful wave,
In the sunrise like a moon,
In the blinding sun at noon,
In the sunset turning sky to fire-lit cave,

Using sweet bush scents that vary through the hours,
Using thrumming, trilling sounds both dark and bright,
There’s impressed upon my eye -
On my brain as on the sky -
The after-image of a girl in blinding light.

And I sacrifice my life upon her altar
In my alternating focus and despair
At parental altercation
And my glacial alteration
As I lose ambition, wisdom, strength, and hair.

But the thrashers sing so sweet, so sweet,
And I soak in sun so warm
With that soft sea breeze,
Those whispering trees -
That I fade with no sense of alarm.

Bring back, O bring back, O bring back my sweet one to me…

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2009

OBSESSION

Like a wasp making a nest under your chair
Like a lizard, watching from ceiling and wall
Like a spider living in a crack in the floor
I am closer than you know, I am here.

One day I was not there, and the next, like the pink and yellow lilies after the rain,
I am all around you, underfoot wherever you go.

You will be moving like a golden butterfly from flower to flower in a poinciana
And, coming upon you as a blackbilled cuckoo, snap!, I will have you.

Your parents may blow like a storm - like a coconut palm I bend and recover;
They, hurricanes, blow all my fronds off - and I sprout new;
They can uproot me and knock me flat - I bend my new growth up, I rise up again.

Like the sea at the rocks, I will lap against you day and night;
Like the waves on the sand I run up, and when I go down, I come up again.

Consider the fish in the sea:
I come back with the tide, with the night, with the dawn, with the moon, through all seasons and years.

Like a singing cicada by day in the bush, like a singing mosquito at night in your room,
Know: I am there with you, whether you see me or not.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, April 2009

HOME THOUGHTS FROM THE NORTH

Dog-skinny, winter’s mangy sun
Slinks between clouds.
A Caribbean dog – there are none such here in the UK …
Nor, there, such mangy suns.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2009

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