OF STAR DUST AND NIGHT SWOON
Inky dark the night
And moonless the sky
For Most-Wicked-est the wand
Had plucked out the moon
The Star Group held witness
To this heinous act
And hurried to a place
More beyond than the sky
Here he dwelleth
The one they called The Highest
Seated on a throne
Most magnificent
Most beautiful
Star Group bowed in reverence
He touched their points so lightly
They blurted out
The plight of the sky
The Highest listened and nodded
And shone in wrath
How! Dare! He!
Thundered The Highest
And the great beyond trembled
At his voice
His sylla-bells reached
The thousand air-drums
Of Most-Wicked-est
Who heard and heard and shook
In a tizzy of petrified fright
The moon dropped
And bounced twice
Then rose as if helium sated
To its place in the sky
Happy Birthdays to
Magaly Guerrero and Rommy Driks,
on April 5th and 28th
Blog hopping today with Prompt Nights
Light is easy to love. Show me your darkness –
[Sanaa is honouring two birthdays in this her final edition of Prompt Nights]
You've heard about the Monday Blues ❧✿❧ well this is Monday WRites (musing on the definition here of rite, as any customary observance or practice eg the rite of afternoon tea). Its hot, hot and very windy here in T&T ❧✿❧ Welcome to Monday WRites #102 ❧✿❧ What's your mood like today ❧✿❧ I invite you to link in with one of your WRites
And the man said: this one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called woman
[Gen 2:23]
THE WAY IT IS
Gender gender goose and gander
What on earth is there to wonder
Boys are the males
And girls are the females
When these two meet as divinely
Ordained life goes on
In hill-towns, from San Fernando to Mayagüez,
the same sunrise stirred the feathered lances of cane
down the archipelago's highways. The first breeze
rattled the spears and their noise was like distant rain
marching down from the hills, like a shell at your ears.
In the cool asphalt Sundays of the Antilles
the light brought the bitter history of sugar
across the squared fields, heightening towards harvest,
to the bleached flags of the Indian diaspora.
The drizzling light blew across the savannah
darkening the racehorses' hides; mist slowly erased
the royal palms on the crests of the hills and the
hills themselves. The brown patches the horses had grazed
shone as wet as their hides. A skittish stallion
jerked at his bridle, marble-eyed at the thunder
muffling the hills, but the groom was drawing him in
like a fisherman, wrapping the slack line under
one fist, then with the other tightening the rein
and narrowing the circle. The sky cracked asunder
and a forked tree flashed, and suddenly that black rain
which can lose an entire archipelago
in broad daylight was pouring tin nails on the roof,
hammering the balcony. I closed the French window,
and thought of the horses in their stalls with one hoof
tilted, watching the ropes of rain. I lay in bed
with current gone from the bed-lamp and heard the roar
of wind shaking the windows, and I remembered
Achille on his own mattress and desperate Hector
trying to save his canoe, I thought of Helen
as my island lost in the haze, and I was sure
I'd never see her again. All of a sudden
the rain stopped and I heard the sluicing of water
down the guttering. I opened the window when
the sun came out. It replaced the tiny brooms
of palms on the ridges. On the red galvanized
roof of the paddock, the wet sparkled, then the grooms
led the horses over the new grass and exercised
them again, and there was a different brightness
in everything, in the leaves, in the horses' eyes.
You've heard about the Monday Blues ❧✿❧ well this is Monday WRites (musing on the definition here of rite, as any customary observance or practice eg the rite of afternoon tea). Honouring 1992-Nobel Laureate, St Lucia born Derek Walcott [1930-2017] ❧✿❧ Welcome to Monday WRites #101 ❧✿❧ No poem from me today ❧✿❧ What's your mood like today ❧✿❧ I invite you to link in with one of your WRites
