Poem: You Remember The People

Like silver fragments of a shooting star...still falling in your head...you remember The People.../ "Hint to Quashiba mek
Bashiba tek notice"...a word to the wise from the wise ones...an ancient knowing of how the World worked...as gnarled fingers pushed home a point..../ "Look at dis chile Marcus...better than dog eh?...better than dog"...the twinkling eyes of a
grandmother at the first helpful habits...of a brown...fast learning baby...and the earth chuckle of a tickled Marcus.../
"Daddy gone...Daddy gone...Daddy gone to Cove and John"...tired mothers singing to tireless babies...before the first cock's
crow...trying to give both food and comfort...and expressing their own longing for fathers in distant lumber camps...or in
some other kind of far away prison.../ "Monkey say cool breeze"...anger too...with laughter and longing...and a thousand
other shiftings of the soul...anger...suppressed once more...with the thought that some day this now pain would pass away...
and everyone...each in his different way...would get what was coming to him.../ Your paddle used to chop through...the gold
and purple flowers that floated on the February tide...and a vague sense of loss sometimes would come over you...flowers
only yesterday sucking in the morning sun...now floating wherever the brown waters would take them.../ "Mornin' Mr Peters"
..."Mornin' boy"...respect and response on the river road taking you to school...to learn about Red Riding Hood and the Wolf...
by mangrove and cruda guarded shores...where alligators watched and waited...for the midday sun that would bring sleep.../
"Boy...when you lappin' tall grass...use a fork stick in the other hand...you ain' seen me do it like dat a tousand times?"...
Maybe it was the knowing of what could be waiting in the tall grass...for blindly thrusting hands...but then again you were
bare-footed...so it must have just been the old knowing of the best way to do all the survival things under the dizzying sun.../ "Ting bad dis year mudda...ting bad...a whole boat load a plantain and dey only give me two dollar"...Overhearing
these words but not understanding fully what "ting bad" really meant...not reading well the worry lines etched deep on sun
struck faces...As you look back seeing better from a long distance...you can't help wondering if there was ever a year
for your bare-footed nine children family people...when "ting" wasn't bad..." Dat man know how to put his mouth where the
soup drippin'..." in the midst of the patient waiting...by the ones knowing only the back breaking days of digging...chopping...washing...and sawing...in the blue heat of August or the steaming wet of January...a sudden outburst of
contempt...for those who tried to find the easy way ou of the sun trap.../ "Miss Mary big foot shine so bright dat you tek um
fuh silvah"...children not having yet reached the age of filaria...singing cruel songs about those who had...in the time when time is never ending.../ "Jumbie lef he pipe hey...no-ko-no-ko"...young ones playing with fire and not knowing it...or maybe
trusting the jumbies not to take offence about child games...as they may have stood nearby and invisible watching...water
mumma...old heig...di-di...and massacuruman...joining the jumbies...in whispered conversations by some of the old ones...
on a Saturday evening by the dark river.../"Eat it boy...what don't kill does fatten!"...an acceptance of hard times in a few words...in the deep green tree and river land...where no-one ever heard of a nutritionist.../ "After a time...is another time"...
Yes...those life scarred...but sometimes laughing ones...who moulded your young years...had a Knowing...a live...laugh...and
die Knowing...you must not forget...you cannot forget.../ Now...in "another time"...the snow lies thick white...outside your
window...and the years have fallen away...as fast as November leaves...but under "electric light"...and by the ice painted
window...you remember The People.........................