poems from "New World"


1 The Passage

Your body
is the dream catcher

Generations
dream and wait
in it

They pass
through your heart
to find their beginning

I have discovered
these words there,
and a witness,

and silence

2 Truth

Am I to be torn from where I am?

Am I to accompany you
to a New World
always just out of reach?

Am I to make up stories?

Am I to bring everything
with me there,

or am I to leave it behind?

4 Mutiny on the Middle Passage

Roll out the charts upon the captain’s table,
hold down the corners with belovèd souvenirs

Lean into me, I will be your ocean

We’ve sailed far out beyond familiar parts,
far too far from home, too far
from customary ways and clan

Green wood and clay and uncut stone,
kalimba and drum; a necklace, and a talisman—
place them on this table so we can plot our course

Lean into me, I will be your ocean

. . . and know that . . .

There are no marks of rock or reef or land, no sign of other masts
The signless papers on the table blank, the signless ocean vast

Reach out beyond this surface with your free hands
(too deep to sound or swim, too wide to know)

Reach into my radiance, I will be your ocean . . .

8 Song of The Meeting

He lay inside me breathing.

My breath is
his breath is
my breath
Is his breath is

his breath
is my breath is
his breath

is

my breath
is my breath is
his breath

is my breath is
my breath is
his breath

His breath is

breath is

his breath is breath his is
is
is
breath

I breathe his breath

beneath inside above around
is his breath is his breath
is his breath is my breath

Breathing

is

is

is.

He lies down beside me breathing.

I am right here.
You lie down beside me
I am here

I am breathing
I am
breathing I

am

10 Calypso

Fancy papers on the wind, streamers of grass
cloud map, less than membrane
gift wrap the storm. No one
knows where or how.

The oilskin poncho­ is flotsam in the dark harbor,
the rope once strong speaks of the past, breaks
between a child’s fingers

and the sails
that were once
filled with . . .

EVERYTHING!

Leaning into it, leaning into it
to salvage something from the wind
a continent perhaps, an entire world.

And the trade winds that bring us, the winds that
breathe us—

Breathe me now!
Oh, breathe me now!

I have not finished being silent with you.
But the green world is
green, green, green and gold.

And your body is gold like the sun.
And I will sing awhile

and sway like a palm in the wind
and remember

EVERYTHING!