I’m not much for looks; they’ve been fading since grade 2 when
Mom sent me to school in a cable knit sweater to be photographed
with my two front teeth in absentia. Now I’m older and
a lifetime of bad dentistry has left me with a gap a little to the right
of centre which I am reluctant to repair because my health plan
underestimates the barrage of opiates I’ll require. 

Saline water supports the elegant weight of the underripe mangoes 
we drop as we eat, peeling off their green skin with our socialist teeth.
Manners take a vacation, and we toss our pits into the sea
vying for distance and to see if we can make the flat edge skip against
the incoming wake of those obscene machines that the tourists use
to grind the air into a sound of petrol-fueled cacophony. 

Saint Lucia Song

Now I know what the tropical wind has been trying to tell me; the same as a spark leapt from its fire to a stray patch of desiccated grass to argue in a fiery language that what is dry can only burn to be free. (Put it a little higher, put those hands a little higher) The sound of St. Lucia is the music in every café every day and the frogs, those beacons at night, keeping the marina boats guided to the portals. The frogs are oracular and wise, knowing where the knots lay in the lines that bind us from mewling newborn to our last exhalation We reside as silhouettes, flagging a coastal easel raising high against the horizon tinctured thalo blue and watery against the sun