Paper T[r]ails
1.
Paper dreams within the cover of a book,
book binds itself with the glue of a spine,
spine weaves together — dovetailed
by the grace of words — words of passion,
words of grief; words of love, hate, wisdom.
Paper crafts its papyrus origins
journeying from tree to table
through clefts, wefts, contours, textures —
transforming from wood to sheet —
white sheets born of unbleached
natural shade — a tabula rasa waiting
for ink, graphite, or sable-hair touch.
2.
Old-fashioned switches — dormant —
now spark static electricity. Paper imagines —
crisp, letter-strewn, bookish, word-wedged.
Phrases elegantly poised, ready to trip off
a palette, exposing photographic plates —
bromide undulations of an untold story —
a narrative to be matted and mounted —
a frame freeing open its borders to dream.
3.
Ilhan’s weathered hands, its bulbous veins
hold time and text beautifully phrased —
he is a poet and painter, lover of the sea,
light, silverfish, a sculptor of history.
Like a musician recording his lyrics —
magnetic forces marrying science
and arts — he swims on crest-troughs
of sine-graph modulations, through
physics’ precision of arithmetic and tact.
Paper dreams in stacks, between covers,
among notes left surreptitiously
between pages for someone else to read.
A stray reader may find the letters —
unframed, borderless — electric spark
seasoned words — a democracy of text —
age preserved below secret seawater.
Home In Castries
for Derek & Sigrid
Loss of one’s family can be grave,
graver still if one loses everyone
within a very short span —
my parents and family disappeared
in an unexpected sweep, suddenly leaving me
alone in this crowded world.
In Castries, as I sauntered through
your beautiful home —
the purity of white
dominated everything —
the flowing curtains, cushions, your white
linen shirts, the sand.
Sitting on the wood-decked porch
sharing a meal that you had cooked
for me, I looked out
over the still blue of your infinity pool
that toppled noiselessly
into the rowdy ocean.
Lucent silhouette of a single Piton peak
mimicked Gros Islet’s double to deceive me —
volcano’s tropical iridescence.
I had came here in an act of friendship
and poetry — a leap of faith on your part —
though compelled to rush
back home prematurely. You both held my hand,
told me to be angry and not sad
at my brother’s misdeeds —
to expect the worst,
perhaps not being able to see
my mother alive again.
It was to be so.
My mother greeted me
dead in a Delhi morgue,
cold and brittle in sadness
at what her younger son did —
yet regal, her love for all intact.
I came here to Castries, perhaps to find
familial ties that bound you both to me —
Caz and Glyn, two brothers
I didn’t know I had — a sister in Anna, an artist in Peter,
and a song in Boo — all born of verse and word,
of love’s madness and local grace.
You are my family now —
I am glad the acrid seawater here
anointed me in your homeland.
White crocuses in your garden gave me light
and invisible ink to write a new history,
tabula rasa waiting to be peopled;
hieroglyphics, uncoded fonts
unmasking new rules —
for another epic to be written.
