An Estuary

Our friends go
like bark from a sycamore. They fall

off the big tree
to be swept with the season.

Too much of their absence
takes mercy out of the heart—

we collect the silence left
by a face that tossed its teeth,

a one-eyed inquisitor,
a faded rose sunk

in a soiled pillow.
We sit on viscous earth

at the edge of a familiar waterhole.
We watch how bumblebees

go heavily from one flower to the next,
sipping dread.

We become an estuary,
grateful for new ships that whistle in.

–Published by Ibbetson Street, #30, Fall-Winter issue, 2011
–Published (first version) by Carcanet Press Inc. England
New Caribbean Poetry, Anthology, 2007