Castaway

I did not want to write a poem full of corpses So I wrote a sacred pink blue sky Jewelled on the horizon Laughter as the loudest star sleeps Humour hugs every ache whole How heavy heads lay after a long day in the humid heat Caribbean moon size and joyous dreams I did not wish to speak of what should not be spoken So silence breathed into all the words A haunting I come from a language that does not write itself Our ancestors speak hurricane A thunder tongue shivering tides and a petty revenge The Mid-Atlantic is a vexed auntie Rattling rivers and roofs ready for reckoning Knocking at the chest of men On the other side On the other side of now there is a door where we return Every island is a hip swaying between here and there A float in the dance to belong Rocking in the arms of the edge Where the sea is an emerald flag And palm trees praise the air Every shore is an altar of remembrance embraced on purpose Pinckney of the sun ray Where prayer trembles the light Or how a storm retreats We marvel and move eternal unfawned and unlost Hips hollering, elbows flapping like fanning flames Bare feet chant in the sand or in a concrete jungle Love taps quake the nape of the earths neck Where daughters of the diaspora dream And inherit journeys of flesh Where a smile is also a scar Or how my grandfather came to see about us Years after he died Wearing my uncle's face Dimpled and shining eyes like two wet black beans Baptised by a spirit Rum slapped on his breath Charming man and all he was Checking on his grand babies Fear not death Fear not death We visit kinfolk there Lingering in the blood where the ocean hums Tribe of the great abyss A not knowing from where or what we come And still to arrive before they could conquer us We came by shipwreck By wind and wave Pushed into the water splashing and shaking The wound The wound teaches us to remember where tomorrow glows listen Listen to the animal clawing within A rooster calls directions between this world And the next there are roads that cannot be mapped And there are streets that do not have names we ran We ran We ran away into the ochre tinted mountains seeking maroon hills I was born borderless Mounting a dollar van like an Orisha Scribbling visions on a train or in an airport travelling Ritual voice and time I was born of distance In between now And then