day 1 poem 1 - st lucia moon

i understand my poems weren't on here, so here goes...

St. Lucia full moon



The moon keeps the valley clear and the strip

of green signals the mangrove meandering like

a macajuel from the mountain road straight

to the sea. You’re tempted to a cynic’s wit

but the beauty opening up the verandah doors,

and another cold Piton, will not allow it,

though it is a sight over which she presides

nightly. Such is the magic of faith,

and though you have known her less

than fourty-eight hours, you trust

that she is true when she offers the bay

and any prayer you might say there

in the presence of stars as real and thick

a healing as you need if you could kneel -

to the smell of salt, the baying of dogs,

the hot breeze and the dark, blue-dark

signaling that something still survives

the vicious Caribbean drought – long enough.



When you were a boy you slept nights

or made love on a bay such as this and though

no sophisticate towards the symbols

in things, understood well-enough then

a woman’s invocation to stop and pay

attention to the magic in an evening

so perfect you sucked your teeth

at its overbearing and pregnant moon,

its hungry surf running up and lapping

at your insteps, drunk men in the rum shop’s

extemporaneous calypsos. You let her

put one finger over your mouth and stop

your careless jokes to listen – listen,

she had said, and then choose this sweaty

crooning love between your bodies right

there on the soft, hot sand.



You are leaning again on these old lessons

of wait and learn; this new, old way to hold

your own body so close and so precious

you’re damn grateful for your own crying

when it comes, your own anger when you

take the time and permission to claim it,

claim the violence and every available

laughter. But back to this second, therefore

because it is why every memory comes

flooding back, so when, later, half-awake

the beauty’s hands knead your back,

you are surprised at the lowing weight

of your own moaning. In another city,

a woman you hurt is re-learning (to love?) you

(and you her) all over again. This

pull over to the shoulder of your life’s

road is what saves you, what enables

you one more time the chance to survey

all the wreckage and hurt and laughter and

flowered brilliance of your days, and now

the sun, golden as soul music,

is coming up, all you can see is the way

fire, fire, comes on the morning, and the lush

green reptilian mangrove stalks the shore.



You’re on your knees repeating some

prayer or another, and it’s all ancient

this bowing to the sunrise, the way

your heart swells to bursting with the laughter

of it. How lucky you are for this second

chance. How lucky you are for the reprieve.

How lucky you are for this woman’s

talking to you again, the slow joy, of being alive.