IDLEWILD IN AUGUST

Far from the city rattle,
in my retreat behind the country piano,
its keys at rest from the gingery fingers
of a grandfather, who loved and ruled

with few breaks in his silence, I stumbled
on a haven that was mine alone – spread out
across old pages that splintered
as I turned them to unearth another time –

adventures that entranced, words that smelled
of sky and sea; of consolation brewed
in Limacol and Lipton’s tea,
of love outgrowing loss in Gramma’s netted mane
steeped in the rosemary uprooted in the sun among
the pearls strung out along our backyard beach.

Idlewild erupted every August,
when Kingston schoolyards rested
from their noisy rows of prisoners in their blue
and white, with their inky fingers scrawling over
British kings and queens, parliaments and wars
that tossed their disconnected islands out to sea.

Along the razor rocks and sea grape bush
huddled round the water’s yawning edge,
a dozen carefree summer urchins
scampered after soldier crabs and cowrie shells,
between our mugs of tambrin drink,
sweet corn and condense milk.

Now children of the salt and sand, beguiled
by freedom in the wild, we arched our backs
against the wind and vanished in the eddies
of McCarthy’s pool, defying sea-egg and mermaid,
till one by one our heads bobbed up anew
like calabashes floating in the unbroken blue
stretched out along the spine of Idlewild.

Seasoned to the bone,
our sinews contoured on the edge-cliffs
of the creek, we threw off British history,
simmered in our praise songs, gospels ringing
in our ears, laying tracks of who we were,
of what we would become – a generation
rising from the embers of a ravished empire
to gather bricks and build our own new nation.