Poetry

Click on the titles below to read the poems.

The Raconteur (for the midnight robber)

From shadows under sandbox tree

I heard spirits' voices,

silvery whisperings:

how in the beginning

the serpent

was a man-snake mapepire.

 

And after tricks with his tail,

he found a place to hide

among balisier flowers.

His fish-rankness spoiled their fragrance,

stiffened their silken orange flames.

 

Tales were told of owl and blackbird,

how they challenged the serpent's wiles.

He hexed them into jumbie birds,

harbingers of death.

 

All this occurred on the eight day,

the Caribbean archipelago

a solid gem

before God's furious love

shattered it into a necklace of jades

strung between NorthAmerica

and South America.