Two Poems: "Santiago" & "Why Blue Seas"

"Santiago"

I sing from a cut canoe in psalms that once were sung by ghosts

within my cracked-kettle ancient bones. The sugar cane, it flutes dulcet notes, A coral so crimson puckers its fingers to tickle cerulean-breakered boats. My oar creaked like an anxious singer below the salty water, and white foam flecked my blackened beard with slaver. Deep sadness, fathoms of ire and spite further spurred the splintering hull on to split seas cyan by dawn’s light. The heralding horn of the mourning gull swept the sand, shook the hulls hungry for onslaughts of waves and salt. Santiago’s soul, slanted and angry, Paced the deck, swayed to that moan and burned like an infernal foundry. Longing brought low his bones, Erased the sweet spears of day prodigally encouraging the reef at hand. Francisco’s hand, Santiago’s bent sigh. “And on your shoulder palms I place,” He laughed, but saw I was to cry. “If love for a girl, silken-waisted and soft to caress plagues you now, Withdraws your love of life, you’ve wasted this our craft, stern to prow. If anchored by amorous lances you’ve thrown, Why do you choose now to bow? Cheer up, Santiago, you’ve grown. The world shall languish, long to prowl the remains of your imminent song.” “¡Escucha Francisco amigo, if all along my aim was to cradle close the ones for whom I long, I should, but I’m not morose for want of friendly waves, But rather what I’ve lost and never known. I must be drunk. I rave And ramble like a singing mass Of summer coral, jaded leaves.”

"Why Blue Seas"

“Bitterness,” she said when on the telephone, “Shall drain your tinajón of better blessing, Will spill ancestral sacrifice and waste your gentle self. Look, see the high heart of the man, Pious in escape, graceful as he held the clan in the cramped cabin of a plane, Never to see his father again. The emerald scar of Camagüey remains to you, Dear son, lost and anxious flower. And the mercy of motherhood, She who three daughters in foreign earth tended with care, that they may live, birth miracle beds of orchards fresh with orchids. Do you now know the clay which gave your life?” Plumes of bright rain stain my stem. Yes, this love for foreign flowers stays; They are my own, as much as ones That gird the shores of ancient seas.

Originally Published in Acentos Review, February 2020 edition: https://www.acentosreview.com/february2020/

Image: Miami Beach, Summer 2019

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