An Old Man on the Mona Road (‘Indian’)

Behar and Belize claim this prodigal son –

Two kinds of ‘Indian’ both meet in one.

Fallen on hard days, it’s plain enough to see,

Sleeping in a slice of pipe, in the Mona tower’s lee.

Hands worn rough and a grin well keen,

That glinting eye a Hemisphere has seen,

Travelling in storied secret, twixt lands of palm and pine.

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Like the Island, just independent, wondering what to do;

Better mus’ come – so they said in seventy-two.

Alas, Socialism’s crisis would come with that of oil;

Scarce food to fill the pot, the streets began to boil.

There was no way

To make sweat pay:

Dash and drugs and a loaded gun –

A young man’s recipe for Fortune.

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Nineteen eighty, it was Election time,

Thirty-eight Special, guarding the Garrison line.

With swaggering irreverence,

Helping usher in Deliverance.

Uncle Sam smiled and the tourists came back –

It would not be long ere he got the sack.

But once has been planted Ambition’s seed,

The scheme, unbidden, will ferment and breed.

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For those brave enough to nocturnal sail,

Ship gold – green and white – by the taped-up bale,

‘Neath the spotlights and the rifles of the curse’d DEA,

There’d be all a man could snort in untaxed hazard pay.

The future, like the moon, must have seemed bright,

Heaving bundles to the shore, lost in a tropic night.

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When the heat rose, northward he went,

Strolling down Spadina, fighting snow and fearing rent.

How many winters passed in that subarctic City,

Tall, grey and rich, yet so cold and poor in pity.

Bidding farewell to the CN Tower and the TTC,

Whether by choice or as a deportee,

To Jamaica he’d homeward flown;

The Winds of Change – oh, how they’d blown!

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With wiry arm and a rusty cutlass,

A hardscrabble life – but hardly ‘wutless’;

Weary with wandering, the years drifted by,

Many moments of wondering just how and why;

Stretched out to sleep beneath the sparkling stars,

Lulled near to dreaming by the passing cars,

The future, like the moon, must have seemed bright,

Drifting on the waves, lost in a tropic night.

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Copyright © 2019 by M.G. Warenycia