Ideas of Home

i

Winter has landed; my boot bucks on a stone
surrounded by snow; I swear, I murmur
Oracabessa. “The rock” is what I call home,
all islanders do, and I’m in blessed Ann Arbour,
mainland, where I found safe harbour under
green sea of trees now becalmed, frosted.
Ideas of Oracabessa propel me forward
down the straits of Packard, past the Jewel
Heart centre where a wild beat poet is ash
urned behind red doors. I stop and pay
respect due him. Then I’m urgent, in need
of touchdown upon ground of my being.
On haste to enter into the land of spices
discoverer within sight of gold fields.

ii

Ideas of home propel me up Parliament
Street; straight past the Jet Fuel café where
machines froth and foam fair-trade coffee
and writers and artists sit in window seats
to divine from flat glass screens, do I dare
go in, sit with them, and drink peach tea?