STRANGER

Even when I lived here, my gaze on this rock
intense as a crow’s, I often felt outside of things.
Not the warbling surf or the flamboyant’s
lolling tongues sounding castanets in the teeth of the wind;
not the slow grazing cattle that taught me patience,
taught me how not to waste energy blindly lashing at flies
but to wait for that one rare moment to dance with death;
not the linguistic loveliness of sparrows and wood doves,
flirtatious, self-conscious, every chirp a lyric,
but the absence of human touch.

Long ago, I had such closeness,
before the shame of poverty and fear of its exposure;
before the hauling pains of poetry,
before Crop Over masks and the shallows of sorrow:
the matriarch’s sudden parting, the patriarch’s untimely death,
the siblings’ flight from sun to snow and another death.

I reasoned this to be art’s exile.
Still, I desired to be touched by hands, not just those rising with sea salt
or glowing with the hibiscus’ thick red palette.
I had my store of metaphors which I would gladly have traded
for a dialogue in flesh and blood,
the concrete thing and not merely its symbol,
however filled with oceanic grace.

I craved contact beyond the surface of how-you-do,
beyond the professional acquaintances and acceptances,
the lively lonely reception rooms, the blank faces,
the cuteness of friends and lovers,
the political correctness in a world where, like that of the spy,
nothing’s as it seems, and you never know the truth
of what’s truly felt or really believed.
So before khus-khus pierced the heart,
we piled into a rented van for our Saturday angelus
in the country where the patriarch was born.
Aunts and uncles, all smiles, hugged us, said how big we’d grown.
After home-cooked eating, the grown-ups spoke
of those who’d passed on: Uncle Ossie, Aunt Dottie.
Remembered their smiles or brows scowling with grief.
We sat silent, absorbing the past into our flesh, our bones.

Throbbing with the ages, we’d go into the yard, run ’bout,
indulge in ripened grapefruits and oranges dangling
like ornaments on a Christmas tree. And if we couldn’t reach them,
someone offered his back for a ladder.
And if some fruit evaded us still, we’d climb the tree...

On Sunday after church, the patriarch headed
the table where we gathered like almonds round a coast
rustling with thanks and shared love passed around in bowls
of rice and peas, beef stew, baked chicken and roasted pork,
steamed beans, avocado and cucumber salad,
the steam from the table coiling upwards like prayers.

Once, on the porch after dinner, I saw a group
of brown butterflies journeying over the garden
like a pattern of sky-divers challenging gravity.
Their wings seemed to touch each other, to support each other.
And I knew the truth in what I saw.

In an alien hour, yearning for such tactile moments,
I remember those wings,
see myself borne on their fluttering, buoyant tips.
And the sight of that glory is enough
to sustain me in my flight.