This is the first time I've been in this mango grove,
hearing the iguaca sing, since my parents left this island

It is mid-July and I am wearing my dad’s old hat palm pava    
square and jaunty on my balding crown


quietly stealing this fleshy passion fruit, its skin warm on my palm, eager to be ******, before the jibaro with their cutting poles awaken—


these violently soft things who delight in the rude noises
made in the slush of their kissing—


their fibers glad to be forever stuck in my teeth
pretending beginnings on new beginnings.                                            

“This year, the mangoes are abundant,” my father used to say to me, his voice blending with the birdsong.

He takes a bite and hands me its yellow-red splendor
to try.  Instantly, I am heartbroken—pierced and open.

I realize, this will be my last time here in this shifting, slow heat  
and I will struggle to remember and feel what it was like  

                                            to touch and eat-- abundant mangoes.

She exhaled—
and the world unraveled,
spores lifting like soft lanterns,
to a sky too wide to hold them.

Between her fingers,
a single stem, hollow-*****,
the ghost of something once golden,
its crown now a hush of white.

She watched—
how the wind took what it wanted,
how even silence knows how to scatter.

Somewhere, far beyond
a wish landed
and called itself a flower again.

over-work and over-striving
to be 'all things to all people'
means we have our colours
bleed out into a murky grey

the next day after azure blue
and smiles with sunshine-yellow
sparkling with the starry sky by night
- the bill has to be paid for the excesses

and a mop-up comes when your sinews  
have been stretched, and burnout brands us
crowding out wherewithal as the smell of rubber
assails on cornering too fast through the hidden shadows

saw it sailing by

at the night watch

clouds arranged dramatic.

let it go,

oh let it go,

let it sail free

are you ready?
look around—
see the birds fly in formation?
(watch them close)
back and forth
back and forth
all on the word
of the forward bird

(a bird falls)

are you scared?
listen up—
hear the roar of the wind?
(the drum of rebellion)
feel it in your chest?
your heart?
your soul?

(get ready)

so now you're ready?
chin up—
you smell the salt?
(the tears?)
you feel the pressure?
you taste the pain?

are you ready?