The first wave

 

 

held us in its long pause.

 

We lived afraid,

 

of touch and touching.

 

Behind masks we sensed,

 

the distance of old selves.

 

 

Our friends died

in the quiet chaos

of our absences.

 

 

All the while we waited,

 

for a declaration

 

a moment of silence

 

bowed heads and hearts

 

but none came—

 

Only more dying,

people lying

skin to skin

in freezer trucks.

 

The flag still flew

 

high in the summer heat

 

the bodies swelled to meet

 

the clamor over loss of revenue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steady

 

 

The world rages—

turning and turning

against the tide

swept up in wave after wave

like the pounding of the upper deck

in the midst of the Bequia channel,

feeling the boat heave and fall

and the tarp whip at the sides,

the thin outline of Becouya

turned askew.

 

Nothing can be steadied now

but the steady churn

slanting away from the isle of clouds.

 

The world rages—

churning and churning through

the deepness of the Atlantic,

that water-soaked black sand calls you home

promises to hold a place for you,

yours and yours alone.

 

Above the waves play songs of Hairoun,

the cries of Yuremein.

Towering on both sides of Kingstown Harbour,

the rounded rock outstretched

to grasp you when you come.

 

 

 

 

∞

 

Felisa Baynes-Ross was born in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. She graduated from Fordham University with a PhD in 2017, and is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Yale University, US. Her interests include the discourse of resistance in natural histories on the Caribbean, as well as the sacred and the secular. Her work has been published widely, including in the Caribbean Quarterly and The Caribbean Writer.