Keith D Trestrail Poet Rhyme

Notes About The Poem

Port of Spain is in Trinidad & Tobago. "Cyan (can) see to cyah (can't) see" is an old saying which means from sunup to sundown or from light to dark. 

My Father’s Car

Blown by Atlantic wind and sail in chains 
        once were ragged souls like chattels branded -
from the Guinea Coast to old Port of Spain
            African herdsmen on slave ships landed.

From my father’s car I saw the canefields 
       where slaves cut from cyan-see to cyah-see.
Where broken men of burden stooped and kneeled
      my father would stop to cut cane for me.

Now broke are those fetters of time and fate 
               in that dark and soulless age of tyranny,
and I in old plantation, horse ranch and estate
        on his fold-out walking stick seat sat his knee.

In its powerdrive push-button auto as a lad
               I rode the hills and streets of old Trinidad -
in that big pale grey Plymouth Fury I swear
    I saw ghosts of the mills and the ploughshare.


            Written: December 2009

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