Coconut stems, some diagonal, stand
Stark ‘gainst shifting gray and white of blue sky,
Hurt feelings, shaped and misshapen by wind
With rain, harsh sun and storm, nature's every
Twisted caprice, as though crafted by the
Well trained but heartless hands of a bonsai
Master gone mad with narcissistic pride.
Here, shipwrecked sailor on naked rock, I
Found mystery in your fragments of sea shells
To fathom you as with Rosetta stone;
Sponge washed ashore soaking in your beauty,
Clinging to your words, hopeless anemone.
Playground of boyhood pangs, oh loneliness,
Elusive iguana unhinging tail,
Vanishing under roots of coconut;
Each time I try to catch you, love, I fail.
Horizon to be seen but never touched,
Trawler dredging depths of my devotion,
Drag your cynic seine across and over
Naive waters of my mixed emotion.
Tears fall like dry coconuts in the wind
To tinder-scorching passion on the sand
Of desires, no tender soul or bare
Foot-sole can walk for long or bear to stand.
A soldier, or hermit, sidling away
With empty shell, once home for some other
Careless crab, you steal this heart, though you know
It's the shell, the shelter of another.
The almond tree, pregnant with almonds like
Your soulful, slanted, haunting, ellipse eyes,
Whose verdure littered pristine peace before
Curious tourists landed, out of the skies,
Like Icarus, while gangs of welfare sweep
Leaves away to keep beach clean and shining,
Shades native Calibans’ once peaceful sleep,
Now perturbed, in a hammock's gentle swing.
I will awake you with a salted kiss,
My lover, from sea spray induced slumber;
Let tide and current take us where they may,
Sailing to the first and final frontier,
To that wide and unknown ocean... we know as love.
Copyright ©2010 by G. Newton V. Chance
- G. NEWTON V. CHANCE
- George Newton Vivian Chance (Trinidad and Tobago) -- member of the Poet Society of Trinidad and Tobago, http://poetssocietytt.blogspot.com/ and the World Poets Society, http://world-poets.blogspot.com/ -- born in Tobago on 3rd March 1957. While residing at Rio Claro was inspired to write over a hundred poems at the turn of the Millennium. Hobbies include playing wind instruments, building computers, observing nature, reading and writing poetry. Believes that the power of a song is in its ability to evoke emotions by the marriage of lyric and music but that music without lyric can be just as powerful, that lyric without music can also be just as powerful, that there is music in the lyric and that lyric can be simple yet profound. Also, in this the age of computers, would like to model his lines after simple and efficient code and, analogous to Object Oriented Programming, achieve most of his imagery from nouns and verbs, avoiding the bloat and excess of unnecessary adjectives. This is what he aspires to attain in his poetry.
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