Reflections at Bolongo. (Poetry).

Reflections at Bolongo

Virgin Islands, September 2000

Each day the Sun, answering universal laws, rises
shines, and blazes an arch across the tropic skies
It comes to rest and cool its radiant mass in seas
where St Ursula and her martyred Virgins kneel
bathing theirs wounds, gorging Gorgonia polyps
with their scarlet blood; colouring the coral reefs
in deep shades of green, blue, and orange-red.
The Flamboyant and Bougainvillea herald the Sun,
and drape the hillside villas in wreaths of scarlet-red

Plastic deck chairs rib the beaches in this island paradise
listening to the rhythmic chorus of ocean waves rising
breaking, washing ashore in a secluded emerald bay
where once Blue Beard from his Castle closely watched
the comings and goings. A solitary schoolboy plays.
His dog-eared books bound tight in neat array
with his papa's broken leather belt. He, scampering free
his smiling battered shoes around his neck the laces tie
then tippy-toeing barefooted to the sandy beach
flirts with the ebb and flow of the boisterous tides.
The storms and the ships come and go
Empty Taiwan cain chairs surround poolsides

freeing their nude sunworshipers to leave port
taking gifts of gold and their tanned bodies North
where, for brief moments, these modern mariners
make their entrances and exits, strut on life's runway
in Fashion's Metropoles. They bow, smile, and sway
accept congratulating hands, are applauded, admired
recognized for their "good taste" and cool style.
Ravenous eyes behind the camouflage of smiles
take leave of Rubens to scan bronze cleavages
plunging to the navel and their dimpled backsides.

Each night in this once Danish Island Paradise
The sun sets, adding yet another day,
warms the passing currents in St Thomas bays
Each day obscures the desperate deeds
that condemn her raiders to a Staghorn coral grave:
In these island bays mercantile galleons with canons
came to drop anchor, trade and await the winds
still carried in the sails of "Heavenly Days"
while they sit transformed on her Ocean floors
surrendering hulls and bounties to her coral laws.

In this museum pulsating with the struggle to live
barnacled prows of wrecks bear the markings of time
tracking the history of nations and innocence lost
to glimpse at a past in the ruins of empires and life.
The encrusted canon barrels still point, threatening
Dislodged kegs of rum rest on steel girded bellies
A chest of coins, a cutlass and buckle tell the stories.
An Aztec necklace shimmering in the ocean weeds
beckons the finned explorers visiting the reefs
to bring closure to the Captain's forlorn mistress
who till she died stood solitary watch weeping
hoping, listening for familiars steps. All this time
these majestic prows kept vigil, guarding their secrets.

And among time's artifacts, the peg-leg of a thief
a one eye pirate, a villain, a "drunkin" conqueror
outlived by his deeds. A wooden stump's his anchor
that marks for posterity the end of mercantile carnage:
the killing of Caribs; the Trans-Atlantic slave trade
bringing new inheritors to these Islands enclaves.

In this New World landscape, the reflective I
Mimics Dali's brush to capture a lonely soul at play
Skimming flat stones on the waters cross the Cay
watching them hop, skip, jump then drop and die
But tries again hoping to make the moment stay
one more hop before the sinking sun shuts its eye
and in its retiring returns the bay to the darkness.

A boy stood on a promontory, sharing the silence
with a goat, silhouettes etched on the canvas of the sky
They watched the passing of the guard, from day
to night. The sun quenching its fires in the darkness
and blushing at its arousing liaison paints the skies
with a thousand colours snatched from the Pallettes
of Gods that arouse emotions intensely felt at sunset;
understood at the winking of the sun's Cyclopean eye
when its lazy eyelids submit to dreams in the silence
broken by the waves that come to crash in the bay.
Like the sails cracking in the wind, the undulations
of the bed sheet flapping at the evening preparations
These boisterous waves expend their energies, recline
spread themselves, and gently caress the shorelines
where in these Caribbean Sea islands, legends say
"Angels pause to rest" and visit the kneeling Saints.
The sun sets, the waves sing in hushed lullabies
and mingle with the grains of sand filling in tracks
left on the beach, marking the retreat of a Coral Crab.

Clarence Bayne is an associate professor in the Department of Management. Information and Decision Making Sciences, Concordia University. He is a founding member of the Black Theatre Workshop, member of the Board of Directors, Quebec Board of Black Educators. He is a prolific writer in drama and poetry and is for the first time presenting his writings for public scrutiny. He is dedicated to the literary, social and economic development of the Black Community.