Invitingly, the sea shines her stars,
captive flames within an impatient heart
as darkness loads the pleasent isles with coarseness,
slow sparks rise over a roaring fire.

And strolling beaches near dawn
when the sand fleas & crabs are seen to flee,
one catches upon the imperfect stillness
a song of one - wind with sea
drawning near
inward, such stars turn
as bonds at last
worked free.

[7]

The moon, at most a shudder or two away.
The sky, bivouaked and cloudy, is within twin sloops of a bay.
The lagoon opens, spars with the greater ocean
by island hopping, green azure blue, as
the wind steps before an open sea.

The great ridge of the mountain
lies obscured by rain;
jasmine, frequent colour
and plantations
with cocoa, soursop, and cinnamon.

Arawaks, Pelee,
Carriacoi, Anegada,
Josephine of the Creoles,
let Admiral Rodney atone Lord Byng.

And my Patois beauty,
breath laced Oleander sweet -
take the hemming from your dress
then come sit down with me.

[8]

The colouring of spacious flowers rove delicious to the eye.
The road above the harbour fickle, carousing in its tendency
to pull too gray by sky enamelled water.
The tropical foliage, still and languorous, to my touch.
Each particle of sunlight dangling as if hoisted from
a perfumed ledge.
Newly mown grass in streaks, browns serpent-like across
the path.
Low erogenous puffs of dust are swathed by passing feet.
Near by, bushes wear the foliage of streaked mud as a mantle
might cottonwool at Christmas.

Life in such climes is built on connotations rather than pure
innuendoes of purpose.
The southern sky, the heat above the sea allude to this.
This triumphant trilogy embossed upon volcanic slate, more
crumpled paper than firm land.

Gravesides lying in twilight nakedness.
The scion moon in her damaged vestry between acolyte
clouds.
Hamlets resembling clotted blood, nicks across an earmarked
horizon.
The poor, wavering to transfixed in their hotly owned sun;
the one commodity they rightly possess.
The outpouring sea, loosing herself in bridged inlets,
countless points that nudge the land in acknowledged
supremacy.
The irrelevance of time, inbreeding of pale intruder.

[9]

At times, I thought of swizzling white rum
in the tropics (not as a vocation),
dropping into the club
for a round of tennis
before dinner at eight
or a quiet set of darts
before retiring.

I had grown accustomed to my new routine
(at least vicariously).
In the best Somerset Maugham tradition
I would dress for dinner,
decline to be patronizing,
avoid the potential slur
if crisp linen did not appear
regularly on my bed or table.
I still found time to stop
for breakfast coffee,
take a moment from regimen
to fondle fresh, wet flowers,
look over the balcony at the
blueness of the bay.

The metaphysical qualities that come
into play erode such morning somnambulations.
The heat depreciated any vainglorious
attempts to lionize the native Caribbean rum.
Tennis and darts become ho-hum,
more of a task than a pleasant diversion.
The little yellowed board seemed
to symbolize not convivial cordiality
but crabbed provincialism.

The tie & collar were intolerable
against the saline tropic night and
seemed rigid in a place and time
the locals could not possibly share.
In short, such things celebrated my apartness.

Linen rarely, if ever, appeared
and to resort to complaints
resulted in only furthering
the distance between one and his hosts.
Even the coffee tasted bitter and seemed
unsuited to the needs of an interloper.
Neither was fruit juice the promised manna.
And one can take only so much nostalgic flower warbling.
The hummingbirds and oleander came to grow
as commonplace and exhausting as the rain.

I began ruminating thoughts back to my previous existence.
Surprised at my illogical shift in allegiances,
I began stealing thoughts more and more surreptitiously
about the naturalness of working a full day,
donning the apparel of a civilized man,
dropping the white man's burden.
Disgust filled me with my former Rousseauian yearnings.
With trepidation, one's dreams
can erect barriers more effective
than the most ill-sponsored illusions.

[10]

The sea is a requisitioned article in my possession.
Above, in fat circles of conformity, glide
turkey vultures, their combs
a rich obscenely red.

The guano rocks are isles and stepping stones
of bird waste.
They lie thick and bedeviled with fish fur,
a dull lavender cached hard to the sun
seems to shine a metallic harvest white
as desert rocklets scattered to the breeze.

A speck of a fisherman dots the horizon.
His craft a barque in loneliness across the sea.
Dolphins inveigh the richness of the depths,
persuade latitudes to drift about their wake.
Pelicans sour the parabola distances between light and sound,
become chancy over this distant breath of song.

Above the cliffs and the inner roads that follow
the desert into geometric squares, stand abodes.
The thin supremacy of shadows at dusk disparage the
traveller here.
Burros strayed lie dead by the highway's edge.
The liquid depth of the mountains reinforces vulnerability.
The night air is alive with the torment of insects, asplash
with sound.
Lights carry an eerie message dotted about the hills.
Feeling alone is a delicacy to be savoured by the standards
of the tropic sun.

[12]

An iron wrought gate of turpentine force conveys little pigment,
almost black parchment letters mindful of
hands, arched and stroked from the very stone, until an
elephantine water runs nettle sand to their granite perch.
The broiling heat in this part of the Indies one knows must,
posthaste, carry to the humus and flies any modicum of
human remains.
And, over distant dispatch of time, the elongated sprawl