A Jamaican Ode to the Spring Equinox
We don’t have spring,
summer, autumn, winter.
We live in green days
that throb with the steel-pan
rhythm of rain on zinc roofs
after the John Crow’s ballet, black
wings beating against the living blue.
Days sticky-sweet like ripe mangoes
bursting in greedy mouths
open like blushing hibiscuses
welcoming the hummingbird’s tongue.
We know when a certain tree bleeds
like a woman, and when the Poui takes off
her yellow skirt without shame.
When fowls don’t congregate
like wise, old women and the leaves
on the ‘trumpet’ tree turn over
like the whites of eyes,
the sky will open like a woman’s legs
without shame, her water breaking,
gullies and rivers swollen like her belly.
We lived through green days when
John Crows planned, patient undertakers
watching ripe flesh burst open, strange fruit.
Dead things blooming, the sodden earth
waiting.