POETIC FACTS: The Persistence of Memory

The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dali

Dreams ring to me like a clarion call

waking every sense of me

home bound

speaking to my soul

in warm, soft whispers of memory

of a childhood spent on blackened beaches

yellowing under the sun

like ripened fruit

growing in the sweetness of breezes

tainted with the scent of mangos and guava

swinging in trees

lifted high into the bluest sky

above The Old Mill at Canefield.

Days spent in Roseau come back to me

like the heat that stretches high under my Convent school skirt

snatching my attention from the palm tree breezes back to tarred streets.

A thirst-wrenching heat that I am forced to quench at a standpipe

that will soon be used for someone’s morning bath.

I want to run over past Cork Street into Four Corners

and beg an ice-cream from my uncle’s parlor to fend off the rising sun

but it is closed, as is Madech on Great George Street

where my Pahweh might have given me some from his stash above the store

The morning sun rises high and early

And I am drawn hypnotically to Bayfront again,

Cruise ships, sitting pretty on the water’s edge

as the horizon beckons in the dawn

I imagine waking to more mornings like this

Hoping tomorrow will never come

And I will never again leave my Dominica

But I open my eyes again, in another man’s land

Exile One playing on the stereo

as I lay reminiscing...

"Good Morning, Dominica!"

© 2011 Kalinago Woryi


ahhhhhhhhhh! The FACT is, I left home 24 years ago and still, the thought of the shores of my island home never cease to draw me back to her...