(2017)
In a caged cell of ocean filled
with juvenile sting ray,
I submerged, ordered myself breathe.
Flooded with anxiety, hyper
ventilating, I jerked back into sky.
The fourth attempt I trusted
that apparatus tooth-clenched and strapped on.
I sucked in air, thick
as tobacco smoke in my lungs.
Through murky gray and a plastic lens,
no surfeit pirate gold tucked among rock,
only sting rays undulating gray wings,
and fish the size of silver-dollars.
In the dolphin pool, I treaded water awaiting
their rubbery press. A pair.
One foot on each dorsal fin, I hitched a half-length
of their compound, a demigod’s chariot,
whitecaps billowing behind. A failed,
flailing victor’s V, I collapsed into their wake.
In the photo see that though we were instructed
to hook hands to vest, I was scratching
the elongated chin-chest of one dolphin like a cat.
That camera temperamental; four minutes that dolphin
with its beaked, mawkish grin nuzzled my cheek
as if it truly liked me. I kissed it. Kissed it
with small filial kisses for a lost cousin, cooing
until my daughter yelled Get
a room, Mom.
I bought a cane reed bracelet, hand-braided to fit
from a man dark as cocoa, sugared with ganja.
In the park, not so much to sell bracelets
but prophecies in patois. He saw past
my piker skin, my present tense, evoked
another time, Yoruba perhaps, where Jah
enthralled my chimeric heart. Magical. A resistor.
He pushed my shoulder, you
know this.
And I felt it too seductive to believe him.
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