Long Bulrush Poems

I have known:
   of wise detectives catching crooks
   of "Thought Police" revising books
   a shipwrecked family named Robinson
   of lion, witch, and wardrobe magic
   Heathcliff's...

Read More

There’s an old river course with beginning and end,
now the river runs straight without this river bend,
where the water is still and the reeds do grow strong.
New life has taken over in a billabong.

The mat...

Read More

The universal worm has got some competition now,
since ‘Sandy’ took me out to Bateson’s dam.
This don’t include the ‘whitchys’ we get in a broken bough,
nor ‘scrubbies’ on the hooks we have to cram
to hide the...

Read More

This is karst country
New Market is a mountaintop
She sits on a limestone hill
And sloping down to a sudden drop
We come to Middle Quarters still
As water in the bulrush 
On the wide chest of a broad...

Read More

In the year of a blood moon,
they assassinated a King
Triple six stamped shrunken head dolls,
with voodoo stitched mouths,
spit the hate bullets out
Brotherhood?      
Universal unity?
Visions of vanilla vanity splattered
Eye and eye...

Read More

Every ringside observer knows,
Truth don’t pull no punches
Getting down dirty in the earthy trenches,
reveal who the real
firmament workers are

When a pile of brown waste
is coming out of
somebody’s backdoor mouth
Don’t let ‘em try to shovel
those swarm...

Read More

Late into night we sat together to plan the vacation
My husband mentioned an exotic hill station
To which he had been once and had a great time
But my sons preferred another spot fit for adventure

Having entered...

Read More

Nearing four hundred years
of living in captivity
Solar eclipse aspirations
has been my people’s enduring
ebony destiny
Almost four hundred years
of divided slavery:
chains seen and chains invisible
Hellish experience of double trouble
Self-congratulatory proclamations
of emancipated release 
were accompanied by chains slapped...

Read More

Gold fields expand softly in front of an eye of a dreamer
Sweet flag near bulrush ancient ballad will murmur
In the water dam is built by hard working beaver 
The all seeing falcon will fly through...

Read More

Offering yielded, yield back to the sovereign king
Devoted to duty, rise in the morning of its flame
Intellect's child, imprinted on Yahweh's soaring wing
Nurturer. natured with heaven's milk, sweet you came
Kindness kindled in hibiscus fire, passion...

Read More

In my dream, I sailed away
Over the tame waters of a tranquil bay
And landed in a magic isle
Never set foot before by anyone alive
A pleasant retreat of birds and beasts
Far removed from world’s dust and...

Read More

Walter Rodney
One evening leaving the bamboo hall
Stood me
Impaled with questions
Die me
To the dead colonial dreams
Wiped my tears of history
And showed me
Rastafari wading through the flood
Making new footprints on old mud
Giving Africa a second birth
Telling heaven...

Read More

Another day’s daylight is fading,
and the evening sunset is red;
in the pond at the end of the garden,
mating calls are starting to spread.

There’s a chorus of croaking and growling
from the suitors attracting a mate. 
The...

Read More

In a damp, bluesy club in the middle of the reeds
Two amphibious musicians gathered in the weeds
Stringed instruments of driftwood and canary grass
Played with webbed fingers and a dash of southern sass
Two of them will...

Read More

SCENES OF A CARELESS BOYHOOD

The sound of water,escaping dams
willows,old rotten planks,slimy
posts,brickwork,old timber props
wet ditches,sedges and silvery nets
towpaths without gates,horses that
tow barges collared with crimson fringe.

Wheat and thatched cottages and cornstacks
grasses in flower,bogrush bulrush and
teazle,so tall.Bindweed,wild...

Read More

The rolling humpback hills
dips down into the valley
Fading off into the horizon.
Giving the illusions of vast herds of buffalos.
Roaming and grazing peacefully 
Across the sun lite plains,
Over fertile fields of wheat and wild grasses.
Stretching into...

Read More

Cinnabar sentinels stand swaying in the mist of morning
through whispered hush and gentle breeze, like jewels , the leaves adorning.

Cool the streams in cresting waves float laurel barques of prizm hues,
washed past bulrush and fading...

Read More