French roads are smooth like the language,
The Dutch are harsh as Calvinism;
The split can be seen through the prism
Of pavement and of herbage,
Though it’s but one little Island, where I chanced to roam,
A magic rock that’s more than a home.
*
Recent – it was yet in Kodachrome’s day
When was gathered in Marigot Bay
The silvery bounty of the turquoise ocean
Laid out before kerchiefed matrons
To offer for their teeming patrons;
Saturated colours of commotion
Bleached out by greed and regulation.
What the Islanders made well
And grew, they were not let to sell
Yet the bureaucrat in Holland wonders
Why the spirit of Morgan stubborn lingers.
*
Lucky there’s lands both drear and grey
Whose tired tenants eager pay
On bloated boats, take luxury rides,
From Simpson Bay to the Boo Boo Jam
Dance to the Zouk and drink a dram
Or ten – all duty-free! –
And at Torchee’s or with Golden Eyes to see
The ‘ti paradis, all its Janus-faced sides.
*
Alas, excess breeds its own bane
The night’s carousing should cease in the morn,
When sore eyes open on a vista forlorn
Scourged by more than a Hurricane.
Dwindling like turtles are the tourist fares;
It’s plain at a gander from a Boardwalk bar,
Hot and heavy are the shopkeeps’ cares;
The barmaid’s gaze wanders afar…
*
Would Old Man Wathey
Have fought the Kingdom’s claim,
As now they chastise their colony
To flip their own shame?
Can MPs and policies save
The merchant strips from debt’s red wave?
*
I wonder these things, but not for too long,
For I wonder most about one who has gone:
The barmaid who, for dollars or from dread,
To Amsterdam flew to lay her pretty head.
I wonder and muse, if, in the chill Dutch night
She finds herself in vivid dreams
Voyaging to somewhere – how real it seems! –
And wakes with a sense of sweetness and light.
Snow to Sand: Poetry, Stories and Musings from Canada, the Caribbean and Ukraine 