In Sainte-Anne, Guadeloupe

for Jacques-Marie Basse and Derek Walcott

we wake to days in august bright with emerald
foliage shimmering around us,

as if we were living in a lost paradise
somewhere, abundant with wild hummingbirds darting
through extravagant leaves, as orange flamboyance peek,
red hibiscus flowers dance high among the leaves,
as shining palm fronds wave like warrior sword blades,
lance through lush, whispering air heavy with heat,
sticky, even in the shade,

as the ocean's murmuring bric-a-brac
is a low, constant reminder in the distance,
foaming to shore wave after wave terracing in,
one after the other, evokes memories of white pages
licked open by wind tonguing a book
left in the salt wash (it reminds me of history,
its far-flung journeys piling up here as sand eye wedge now
between my toes, next to the webbed imprints of birds,
the zigzagging trail of lizards wriggling through
the hieroglyphic ambrosia of amphibious ambivalence,
soaked in amber), just before the whispering goes

still, then, just as quickly, a fresh new breeze startles
with its coolness, licks a soothing tongue
wet across my sweating forehead,
blesses open my eyelids, weighed down now
with a gathering languor so heavy eye find myself drifting,
as in a dream, toward sleep,
nodding a herky-jerky head dance imitating a junkie's,
so pronounced at times my noggin resembles a cork
bobbing above a fisherman's line & hook,
after a hungry fish has bitten
& the struggle for its survival is on,

eye linger here for a moment, think of the breadfruit
leaves waving in benediction after the wind's blustering
command, rustling groves of mangoes & strawberries
just off the black snake of a road twisting through bouliqui
from sainte-anne, in central guadeloupe

& there, in bouliqui, the hibiscus are pink
buds imitating pursed lips waiting for a kiss,
while above birds lance close heavy air, plunge through amber
filigreed light between the lattice-drop of leaves
as the sun passes behind & over the treetops,
starting its daily descent toward the frigid pacific,
a sudden wet breeze startles my dreams with its here-
then-gone sweet tongue of my wife's cool breathing,

then, back in sainte-anne, wrenched out of my dreams,
eye watch dragonflies swim the air
sweating toward twilight, while white butterflies wobble,
float like tiny sacred ghosts between the scarlet, yellow
flamboyance, the emerald leaves holding the hibiscus's
red lips, deep within our own paradise here
at auberge le grande large,

among the lengthening shadows, palm fronds waving
like servants above a giant frog, who seems to be leading
a deafening choir of other toads in a symphonic offering,

eye listen in awe as nature's orchestra boggles my senses
once more with its beautiful perfect pitch & rhythm