Fallen, salt-burned leaves
Mango blossoms in the yard
Osain's teardrops.
Water at my door
After days of constant rain--
The wrath of Oya.
A bloom of red tide
Six hundred tons of dead fish
In Xango's footsteps.
Along the shore's edge
Indian River sparkles
With alms to Oshun.
Biscayne's coral reef
White as Yemaya's bracelets--
Bleached of her mercy
In the dry season
Ogun’s breath sends sparks flying
To the Everglades
On morning TV
Hosts promise bright days ahead
To Eshu's cackles
_____________
Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two collections of short stories, three children's books, and two novels. His next collection of poems, Archipelagos (Peepal Tree Press), uses Sylvia Wynter’s readings of Cesaire and Foucault along with Amitav Ghosh's paradigm to explore the connection between colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity in the Plantationocene.