Barbados Breathing

Listen to her shoreline
Her breath pumps
In and out
Ebbing
And flowing
With the moon

Tonight the smell of charcoal
dances with
Salt thickened air
Swirling among
the older Bajans
Swinging their soulful hips
At Oistens Bay’s
Weekly fish fry

Treble takes hold
Of love lost spirits
While baselines
Thrump the
Ancestors below
Whose spirits
Still soft shoe
Across the sand
And floorboards
Of yesteryear’s
Church grounds
And shantytown
Hovels

Then, unlike now
Joy was a
regulated
Affair
Rarified for the
Aristocracy
And plantation owners
Who stripped
And whipped
And sullied
The surface of
This paradise

But tonight
Amongst the
Rum
And the reggae
And the revelry
The past is dead
Tomorrow is
leagues away
And
Nothing else
Exists.